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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


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ENGLISH    LANDS   LETTERS 
AND  KINGS 

jfrom  Celt  to  TLixt^ov 


ENGLISH    LANDS    LETTERS   AND    KINGS 

By  Donald  G.  Mitchell 

I.  fftom  Celt  to  Uu^or 
II.  jfrom  Elijabctb  to  anne 
Each  1  vol.,  12mo,  cloth,  gilt  top,  $1.50 


ENGLISH  LANDS   LETTERS 
AND  KINGS 

]from  Celt  to  ^ubor 

BY 

Donald  G.  Mitchell 


NEW  YORK 

Cbarles  Scribner's  Sons 

MDCCCXCI 


Copyright,  1889,  by 
CHARLES   SCKIBNER'S   SONS. 


PREFACE.     '^' 


J I IHIS  little  book  is  made  up  from  the  opening 
-^  series  of  a  considerable  range  of  "talks," 
with  which  —  during  the  past  few  years  —  I  have 
undertaken  to  entertain,  and  (if  it  might  be)  in- 
struct a  bevy  of  friends  ;  and  the  interest  of  a  few 
outsiders  who  have  come  to  the  hearings  has  in- 
duced me  to  put  the  matter  in  type,  I  feel  some- 
what awkwardly  in  obtruding  upon  the  public  any 
such  panoramic  view  of  British  writers,  in  these 
days  of  specialists  —  when  students  devote  half  a 
lifetime  to  the  analysis  of  the  works  of  a  single 
author,  and  to  the  proj)er  study  of  a  single  period. 

I  have  tried,  however,  to  avoid  bad  mistakes  and 
misleading  ones,  and  shall  reckon  my  commentary 
only  so  far  forth  good  —  as  it  may  familiarize  the 


viii  PREFACE. 

average  reader  with  the  salient  characteristics  of 
the  writers  brought  under  notice,  and  shall  put 
these  writers  into  such  a  swathing  of  historic  and 
geographic  enwrapments  as  shall  keep  them  better 
in  mind. 

When  I  consider  the  large  number  of  books 
recently  issued  on  similar  topics,  and  the  scholar- 
ly acuteness,  and  the  great  range  belonging  to  so 
many  of  them,  I  am  not  a  little  discomforted 
at  thought  of  my  bold  scurry  over  so  wade  reach 
of  ground.  Indeed,  I  have  the  figure  before  me 
now  —  as  I  hint  an  apology  —  of  an  old-time  coun- 
try doctor  who  has  ventured  with  his  saddle-bags 
and  spicy  nostrums  into  competition  with  a  half 
score  of  special  practitioners  —  with  their  micro- 
scopy and  their  granules  dosimelriques ;  but  I  think, 
consolingly,  that  possibly  the  old-time  mediciner 
—  if  not  able  to  cure,  can  at  the  least  induce  a 
pleasurable  slumber. 

Edgewood,  1889. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 


PAGE 

Preliminary, 1 

Early  Centuries, 5 

Celtic  Literature, 7 

Beginning  of  English  Learning,         ...  9 

C^DMON, 13 

Beda, 15 

King  Alfred, 17 

Canute  and  Godiva, ?2 

William  the  Norman, 25 

Harold  the  Saxon, 29 


CHAPTER  II. 

Geoffrey  of  Monmouth, 37 

King  Arthur  Legends, 39 

Early  Norman  Kings, 46 

Richard  Cceur  de  Lion, 50 

Times  of  King  John, 53 

Mixed  Language 56 


X  CONTENTS. 

PACK 

Sir  John  Mandeville, 59 

Early  Book-making 62 

Religious  Houses, 66 

Life  of  a  Damoiselle, 73 


CHAPTER   III. 

Roger  Bacon, 77 

William  Langlande, 84 

John  Wyclif, 90 

Chaucer, 97 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Of  Gower  and  Froissart, 12V 

Two  Henrys  and  Two  Poets,        .        .        .        .132 

Henry  V.  and  War  Times, 141 

Joan  of  Arc  and  Richard  III.,      ....      146 
Caxton  and  First  English  Printing,      .        .        .  149 

Old  Private  Letters, 154 

A  Burst  of  Balladry, 158 


CHAPTER  V. 

Early  Days  of  Henry  VIII.,         ....  167 

Cardinal  Wolsey,  and  Sir  Thomas  More,     .  .173 

Cranmer,  Latimer,  Knox,  and  Others,        .        .  182 
Verse-writing  and  Psalmodies,       ....  189 

Wyatt  and  Surrey, 193 

A  Boy-king,  a  Queen,  and  Schoolmaster.     .  .  197 


CONTENTS, 


CHAPTER  VI. 

PAGE 

Elizabethan  England, 204 

Personality  of  the  Queen, 207 

Burleigh  and  Others,    .        .        .        .        .  210 

A  Group  of  Great  Names,        .        .  .         .  214 

Edmund  Spenser,     .        •. 217 

The  Faery  Queen, 221 

Philip  Sidney,  . 230 


CHAPTER  VII. 

John  Lyly, 245 

Francis  Bacon, 250 

Thomas  Hobbes 261 

George  Chapman, 266 

Marlowe, 269 

A  Tavern  Coterie, 274 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

George  Peele, 284 

Thomas  Dekker, 287 

Michael  Drayton, 291 

Ben  Jonson, 295 

Some  Prose  Writers,         .        .        .        .        ,        .  303 
The  Queen's  Progresses,       ....        .312 


ENGLISH    LANDS,     LETTERS, 
&  KINGS, 


CHAPTEK  I. 


I  HAVE  vmdertaken  in  tliis  book  a  series  of  very 
familiar  and  informal  talks  with  my  readers 
about  English  literary  people,  and  the  ways  in  which 
they  worked  ;  and  also  about  the  times  in  which 
they  Hved  and  the  places  where  they  grew  up. 
"We  shall  have,  therefore,  a  good  deal  of  concern 
with  English  history  ;  and  with  English  geography 
too  —  or  rather  topogi-aphy  :  and  I  think  that  I  have 
given  a  very  fair  and  honest  descriptive  title  to  the 
material  which  I  shall  set  before  my  readers,  in 
calling  it  a  book  about  English  Lands  and  Lutters 

A.ND  Kings. 
I 


2  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KTNGS. 

It  appears  to  me  that  American  young  people 
have  an  advantage  over  British-born  students  of  our 
History  and  Literature  —  in  the  fact  that  the  locah- 
ties  consecrated  by  great  names  or  events  have  more 
illuminating  power  to  us,  who  encounter  them 
rarely  and  after  voyage  over  sea,  than  to  the  Eng- 
Hshman  who  lives  and  grows  up  beside  them. 
Londoners  pass  Bolt  Com't,  Fleet  Street,  and  Dr. 
Johnson's  tavern  a  hundred  times  a  year  with  no 
thought  but  of  the  chops  and  the  Bai'clay's  ale  to 
be  had  there.  But  to  the  cultivated  American  these 
localities  start  a  charming  procession,  in  which  the 
doughty  old  Dictionary-maker,  with  his  staff  and 
long  brown  coat  and  thi*ee  cornered  hat,  is  easily 
the  leader. 

For  my  own  part,  when  my  foot  first  struck  the 
hard-worked  pavement  of  London  Bridge,  even  tlie 
old  nursery  sing-song  came  over  me  with  the  force 
of  a  poem,  — 

As  I  was  going  over  London  Bridge 
I  found  a  penny  and  bought  me  a  kid. 

So,  too  —  once  upon  a  time  —  on  a  bright  May- 
day along  the  Tweed,   I  was  attracted  \>y  an  old 


PRELIMINARY.  3 

square  ruin  of  a  tower  —  very  homelj  —  scarcely 
picturesque  :  I  had  barely  ciu'iosity  enough  to  ask 
its  name.  A  stone-breaker  on  the  high-road  told 
me  it  was  Norham  Castle  ;  and  straightway  all 
the  dash  and  clash  of  the  poem  of  "Marmion"* 
broke  around  me. 

New  I  do  not  think  our  cousins  the  Britishers,  to 
whom  the  loveliest  ruins  become  humdrum,  can  be 
half  as  much  alive  as  we,  to  this  sort  of  enjoyment. 

I  shall  have  then  —  as  I  said  —  a  great  deal  to 
say  about  the  topography  of  England  as  well  as 
about  its  books  and  writers  ;  and  shall  try  to  tie 
together  your  knowledge  of  historic  facts  and  liter- 
ary ones,  with  the  yet  more  tangible  and  associated 
geographic  facts  —  so  that  on  some  golden  day  to 
come  (as  golden  days  do  come)  the  sight  of  a  mere 
thread  of  spire  over  tree-tops,  or  of  a  cliff  on  York- 
shii-e  shores,  or  of  a  quaint  gable  that  might 
have  covered  a  "  Tabard  Tavern,"  shall  set  all  your 


The  breeze  wliieli  swept  away  the  smoke 

Round  Norham  Castle  rolled, 
When  all  the  loud  artillery  spoke, 
With  lightning  flash  and  thunder  stroke, 
As  Marmion  left  the  hold. 


4  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KhWGS. 

historic  reading  on  the  flow  again  —  thus  extending 
and  brightening  and  giving  charm  to  a  hundred 
wayside  experiences  of  Travel. 

One  other  preHmiuary  word  :  —  On  that  great 
reach  of  ground  we  are  to  pass  over  —  if  we  make 
reasonable  time  —  there  must  be  long  strides,  and 
skippings :  we  can  only  seize  upon  illustrative 
types  —  little  kindling  feeders  of  wide-reaching 
flame.  It  may  well  be  that  I  shall  ignore  and  pass 
by  lines  of  thought  or  progress  veiy  lively  and 
present  to  you  ;  may  be  I  shall  dwell  on  things 
ah'eady  familiar ;  nay,  it  may  well  happen  that  many 
readers  —  young  and  old  —  fresh  from  their  books 
■ —  shall  know  more  of  matters  touched  on  in  our 
rapid  survey  than  I  know  myself :  never  mind  that ; 
but  remember,  —  and  let  me  say  it  once  for  all  — 
that  my  aim  is  not  so  much  to  give  definite  in- 
struction as  to  put  the  reader  into  such  ways  and 
starts  of  thought  as  shall  make  him  eager  to  in- 
struct himself. 


EARLY  CENTURIES. 


Early    Centuries. 

In  those  dreary  early  centuries  when  England 
was  in  the  throes  of  its  beginnings,  and  when  the 
Konian  eagle  —  which  had  always  led  a  half-stifled 
life  amongst  British  fogs,  had  gone  back  to  its  own 
eyrie  in  the  South  —  the  old  stock  historians  could 
and  did  find  little  to  fasten  our  regard  —  save  the 
eternal  welter  of  little  wars.  Indeed,  those  who 
studied  fifty  years  ago  will  remember  that  all  early 
British  history  was  excessively  meagre  and  stiff; 
some  of  it,  I  daresay,  left  yet  in  the  accredited 
courses  of  school  reading  ;  dreadfully  dull  —  with 
dates  piled  on  dates,  and  battles  by  the  page  ;  and 
other  pages  of  battle  peppered  with  such  names 
as  Hengist,  or  Ethelred  and  Cerdic  and  Cuthwidf, 
or  whoever  could  strike  hardest  or  cirt  deepest. 

But  now,  thanks  to  modem  inquiry  and  to  such 
men  as  Stubbs  and  Freeman  and  Wright,  and  the 
more  entertaining  Green  — •  we  get  new  light  on 
those  old  times.  We  watch  the  ribs  of  that  ancient 
land  piling  in  distiucter  shape  out  of  the  water  : 
we  see  the  downs  and  the  bluffs,  and  the  fordable 


6  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KINGS. 

places  in  the  rivers  ;  we  know  now  just  where  great 
wastes  of  wood  stood  in  the  way  of  our  piratical 
forefathers  —  the  Saxons,  the  Jutes,  and  the  Angles; 
these  latter  either  by  greater  moral  weight  in  theiu, 
or  by  the  accident  of  numbers  (which  is  the  more 
probable),  coming  to  give  a  name  to  the  new  coun- 
try and  language  which  were  a-making  together. 

We  find  that  those  old  Romans  did  leave,  besides 
flieii-  long,  straight,  high-roads,  and  Roman  villas, 
and  store  of  sepulchral  vases,  a  germ  of  Roman 
laws,  and  a  little  nucleus  of  Roman  words,  trace- 
able in  the  institutions  and  —  to  some  slight  degree 
—  in  the  language  of  to-day. 

We  see  in  the  later  pages  of  Green  through 
what  forests  the  rivers  ran,  and  can  go  round  about 
the  great  Roman-British  towns  (Roman  first  and 
then  adopted  by  Britons)  of  London  *  and  of  York  ; 
and  that  other  magnificent  one  of  Cirencester  (or 
Sisister  as  the  English  say,  with  a  stout  defiance  of 
their  alphabet).  We  can  understand  how  and  why 
the   fat  meadows  of  Somersetshire  should   be  cov- 

*  London  was  possibly  a  Britisli  settlement  before  the  Ro- 
mans built  there  ;  thougli  latest  investigators,  I  think,  favor 
the  contrary  opinion. 


CELTIC  LITERATURE.  7 

eted  by  maraudei-s  and  fought  for  by  Celts  ;  and 
we  behold  more  clearly  and  distinctly  than  ever, 
under  the  precise  topography  of  modern  investi- 
gators, the  walls  of  wood  and  hills  which  stayed 
Saxon  pursuit  of  those  Britons  who  sought  shelter 
in  Wales,  Cumberland,  or  the  Cornish  peninsula. 

Celtic  Literature. 

Naturally,  this  flight  of  a  nation  to  its  fastnesses 
was  not  without  clamor  and  lament  ;  some  of  which 
—  if  we  may  trust  current  Cymric  traditions  —  was 
put  into  such  piercing  sound  as  has  come  down 
to  our  own  day  in  the  shape  of  Welsh  war-songs. 
Dates  are  uncertain  ;  but  without  doubt  somewhat 
of  this  Celtic  shrill  singing  was  of  earlier  utterance 
than  anything  of  equal  literary  quality  that  came 
from  our  wrangling  Saxon  or  West-Saxon  fore- 
fathers in  the  fertile  plains  of  England. 

Some  of  these  Celtic  war  strains  have  been  turned 
into  a  music  by  the  poet  Gray*  which  our  English 


*  "  To  Cattraeth's  vale,  in  glittering  row, 
Twice  two  liuudred  warriors  go  ; 
Every  warrior's  manly  neck 
Chains  of  regal  honor  deck, 


8  LANDS,  LETTERS,    <fH  KINGS. 

ears  love  ;  Emerson  used  to  find  regalement  in  the 
strains  of  another  Welsh  bard  ;  and  the  Mabino- 
gion,  a  pleasant  budget  of  old  Cymric  fable,*  has 
come  to  a  sort  of  literary  resurrection  in  our  day 
under  the  hands  of  the  late  Sidney  Lanier.  If  you 
would  know  more  of  things  Celtic,  I  would  com- 
mend to  your  attention  a  few  lectures  read  at  Ox- 
ford in  1864:-65  by  Matthew  Arnold  in  which  he 
has  brought  a  curious  zeal,  and  his  wonted  acumen 

Wreathed  in  many  a  golden  link : 

From  the  golden  cup  they  drink 

Nectar  that  the  bees  produce, 

Or  the  grape's  ecstatic  juice, 

Flush'd  with  mirth  and  hope  they  burn. 

But  none  from  Cattraeth's  vale  return 

Save  Aeron  brave,  and  Conan  strong 

(Bursting  through  the  bloody  throng), 

And  I,  the  meanest  of  them  all 

That  live  to  weep  and  sing  their  fall." 

*  Lady  Charlotte  Elizabeth  Schreiber  {nee  Guest) 
made  the  first  translations  which  brought  these  Welsh  ro- 
mances into  vogue.  Among  them,  is  Geraint,  the  son  of 
Erhin,  which,  in  our  day  has  developed  into  the  delightful 
Oeraint  and  Enid.  Mr.  W.  F.  Skene  has  published  the 
texts  of  various  poems  (from  original  MSS.)  attributed  to 
Taliesin,  Aneurin,  and  others,  with  translations  by  D.  Sylvan 
Evans  and  Robert  Williams. 


BEGINNING    OF  ENGLISH  LEARNING.       9 

to  an  investigation  of  the  influences  upon  English 
literature  of  that  old  Celtic  current.  It  was  a  wild, 
turbulent  current ;  it  had  fret  and  roar  in  it ;  it 
had  passion  and  splendor  in  it ;  and  there  are  those 
who  think  that  whatever  ardor  of  imagination,  or 
love  for  brilliant  color  or  music  may  belong  to  our 
English  race  is  due  to  old  interfusion  of  British 
blood.  Certainly  the  lively  plaids  of  the  High- 
lander and  his  bagpipes  show  love  for  much  color 
and  exuberant  gush  of  sound ;  and  we  all  under- 
stand that  the  Celtic  Irishman  has  an  appetite 
for  a  shindy  which  demonstrates  a  rather  lively 
emotional  nature. 

Beginning  of  Englisli  Leai'ning. 

But  over  that  ancient  England  covered  with  its  al- 
ternating fens  and  forests,  and  grimy  Saxon  ham- 
lets, and  Celtic  companies  of  huts,  there  streams 
presently  a  new  civilizing  influence.  It  is  in  the 
shape  of  Christian  monks  *  sent  by  Pope  Gregory  the 

*  There  was  a  sort  of  Christianizing  of  Britain  in  later  Ro- 
mish times,  but  not  much  warmth  or  spending  force  in  it ; 
and  Wright  assures  us  that  amid  all  the  Roman  remains  thus 
far  brought  to  light  of  mosaics  and  vases,  only  one  Christian 


lo  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  A'LVGS. 

Great,  who  land  upon  the  island  of  Tlianet  near  the 
Thames  mouth  (whereabout  are  now  the  bustling  lit- 
tle watering  j^laces  of  Kamsgate  and  Margate),  and 
march,  two  by  two  —  St.  Augustine  among  them  and 
towering  head  and  shoulders  above  the  rest — bear- 
ing silver  crosses  and  singing  litanies,  uj)  to  the  halls 
of  Ethelbert — near  to  the  very  site  where  now  stands, 
in  those  rich  Kentish  lands,  the  august  and  beauti- 
ful Cathedral  of  Canterbury.  There,  too,  sprung  up 
in  those  earlier  centuries  that  Canterbury  School, 
where  letters  were  taught,  and  learned  men  congre- 
gated, and  whence  emerged  that  famous  scholar— Aid- 
helm,*  of  whom  the  great  King  Alfred  speaks  admir- 
ingly ;  who  not  only  knew  his  languages  but  could 
sing  a  song  ;  a  sort  of  early  Saxon  Sankey  who 
beguiled  wanderers  into  better  ways  by  his  homely 

symbol  has  been  found.  Tliis  is  on  a  tessellated  pavement  of 
a  Roman  villa  at  Frampton,  in  Dorsetshire.  Lysous  published 
an  engraving  of  this  pavement. 

See  also  Green  (introduction  to  Making  of  England)  in 
reference  to  Christian  inscriptions  and  ornaments  of  Roman 
date.     He  makes  no  allusion  to  the  Frampton  symbol. 

*  Green  :  Making  of  England,  p.  337.  A  church  he 
erected  at  Bradford-on-Avon  stands  in  almost  perfect  preser- 
vation to-day.  Murray's  Alph.  Eng.  Handbook.  The  Edi- 
tor of  Guide  Book  makes  an  error  in  date  of  the  erection. 


BEGINNING  OF  ENGLISH  LEARNING.      1 1 

rhythmic  utterance.  I  think  we  may  safely  count 
this  old  Aldhelni,  who  had  a  strain  of  royal  blood  in 
him,  as  the  first  of  English  ballad-mongers. 

From  the  north  of  England,  too,  there  was  at  al- 
most the  same  date,  another  gleam  of  crosses,  coming 
by  way  of  Ireland  and  lona,  where  St.  Columba,* 
commemorated  in  one  of  Wordsworth's  Sonnets, 
had  established  a  monastery.  We  have  the  good  old 
Irish  monk's  lament  at  lea\'ing  his  home  in  Ireland  for 
the  northern  wilderness ;  there  is  true  Irish  fervor  in 
it : — "  From  the  high  prow  I  look  over  the  sea,  and 
great  tears  are  in  my  gray  eyes  when  I  turn  to  Erin 
— to  Erin,  where  the  songs  of  the  birds  are  so 
sweet,  and  where  the  clerks  sing  like  the  birds  ; 
where  the  young  are  so  gentle,  and  the  old  so  wise  ; 
where  the  great  men  are  so  noble  to  look  at,  and 
the  women  so  fair  to  wed." 

Ruined  remnants  of  the  lona  monastery  are  btill 

*  Sonnet  composed  or  suggested  during  a  tour  in  Scotland, 
in  summer  of  1833. 

' '  Isle  of  Columba's  Cell, 
Where  Christian  piety's  soul-cheering  spark, 
(Kindled  from  Heaven  between  the  light  and  dark 
Of  time)  shone  like  the  morning-star, — farewell!  " 


12  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  AVjVGS. 

to  be  found  ou  that  little  Western  island  —  within 
hearing  almost  of  the  waves  that  surge  into  the 
caves  of  Staffa.  And  from  this  island  stand-point, 
the  monkish  missions  were  established  athwart 
Scotland ;  finding  foothold  too  all  down  the  coast  of 
Northumberland.  Early  among  these  and  very  not- 
able, was  the  famous  Abbey  of  Lindisfarne  or  the 
Holy  Isle,  not  far  southward  from  the  mouth  of  the 
Tweed.  You  will  recall  the  name  as  bouncing 
musically,  up  and  down,  through  Scott's  poem  of 
"Marmion."  A  little  farther  to  the  south,  upon  the 
Yorkshire  coast,  came  to  be  established,  shortly 
afterward,  the  Whitby  monastery  ;  its  ruins  make 
now  one  of  the  shows  of  Whitby  town — one  of  the 
favorite  watering  places  of  the  eastern  coast  of  Eng- 
land, and  well  known  for  giving  its  name  to  what  is 
called  Whitby  jet  —  which  is  only  a  finer  sort  of 
bituminous  coal,  of  which  there  are  great  beds 
in   the   neighborhood.*     The   Abbey  ruin  is  upon 

*  Of  late  years,  owing  to  tlie  difficulty  of  working,  the  min- 
ing and  manufacture  of  the  jet  has  nearly  gone  by  —  other 
carbon  seams  in  Spain  offering  better  and  more  economic  re- 
sults ;  these  latter,  however,  still  bear  the  name  of  Whitby 
Jet. 


C^DMON.  13 

heights,  from  which  are  superb  views  out  upon 
the  German  Sea  that  beats  with  grand  uproar  upon 
the  Whitby  cHffs.  To  the  westward  is  the  charm- 
ing country  of  Eskdale,  and  by  going  a  few  miles 
southward  one  may  come  to  Robinhood's  bay ; 
and  in  the  intervening  village  of  Hawsker  may 
be  seen  the  two  stones  said  to  mark  the  flight 
of  the  arrows  of  Robinhood  and  Little  John, 
when  they  tried  their  skill  for  the  amusement  of 
the  monks  of  Whitby. 

Coddmon. 

Well,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  637,  this  Whitby 
Abbey  was  founded  by  the  excellent  St.  Hilda,  and 
it  was  under  her  auspices,  and  by  virtue  of  her 
saintly  encouragements,  that  the  first  true  Eng- 
lish poet,  C?edmon,  began  to  sing  his  Christian 
song  of  the  creation.  He  was  but  a  cattle-tender 
■ — unkempt — untaught,  full  of  savagery',  but  with 
a  fine  phrenzy  in  him,  which  made  his  paraphrase 
of  Scripture  a  spur,  and  possibly  —  in  a  certain 
imperfect  sense,  a  model  for  the  muse  of  John 
Milton. 

Of  the  chaos  before  creation,  he  says  :  — 


14  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

Earth's  surface  was 
With  grass  not  yet  be-greened  ;  while  far  and  wide 
The  dusky  ways,  with  black  unending  night 
Did  ocean  cover. 

Of  the  great  Over-Lord  God- Almighty,  he  says  — 

In  Him,  beginning  never, 
Or  origin  hath  been  ;  but  he  is  a^'e  supreme 
Over  heaven's  thrones,  with  high  majesty 
Righteous  and  mighty. 

And  again,  —  that  you  may  make  for  yourselves 
comparison  with  the  treatment  and  method  of  Mil- 
ton, —  I  quote  this  picture  of  Satan  in  hell :  — 

"Within  him  boiled  his  thoughts  about  his  heart ; 

Without,  the  wrathful  lire  pressed  hot  upon  him  — 

He  said,  —  '  This  narrow  place  is  most  unlike 

That  other  we  once  knew  in  heaven  high, 

And  which  my  Lord  gave  me  ;  tho'  own  it  now 

We  must  not,  but  to  him  must  cede  our  realm. 

Yet  right  he  hath  not  done  to  strike  us  down 

To  heirs  abyss  —  of  heaven's  realm  bereft  — 

Which  with  mankind  to  people,  he  hath  planned. 

Pain  sorest  this,  that  Adam,  wrought  of  Earth 

On  my  strong  throne  shall  sit,  enjoying  Bliss 

While  we  endure  these  pangs  —  hell  torments  dire, 

Woe  !   woe  is  me  !     Could  I  but  use  my  hands 

And  might  I  be  from  here  a  little  time  — 

One  winter's  space  — then,  with  this  host  would  I  — — 

But  these  iron  bands  press  hard  — this  coil  of  chains 


BEDA.  15 

There  is  but  one  known  MS.  copy  of  this  poem. 
It  is  probably  of  the  tenth,  certainly  not  later  than 
the  eleventh  century,  and  is  in  the  Bodleian  Lib- 
rary at  Oxford.  It  is  illuminated,  and  some  scenes 
represented  seem  to  have  been  taken  from  the  old 
miracle  plays.*  It  was  printed  in  1655  :  in  this 
form  a  copy  is  said  to  have  reached  the  hands  of  Mil- 
ton, through  a  friend  of  the  printer :  and  it  may 
well  be  that  the  stem  old  Puiitan  poet  was  moved 
by  a  hearing  of  it,  —  for  he  was  blind  at  this  date, 
—  to  the  prosecution  of  that  grand  task  which  has 
made  his  name  immortal. 

Beda. 

We  might,  however,  never  have  known  anything  of 
Cfedmon  and  of  Saint  Hilda  and  all  the  monasteries 
north  and  south,  except  for  another  worthy  who  gi-ew 
up  in  the  hearing  of  the  waves  which  beat  on  the 

*  I  ought  to  mention  that  recent  critics  have  questioned 
if  all  the  verse  usually  attributed  to  Csedmon  was  reallj 
written  by  him:  nay,  there  have  been  queries —  if  the  pict- 
ure of  Satan  itself  was  not  the  work  of  another  hand.  An 
analysis  of  the  evidence,  by  Thomas  Arnold,  may  be  found 
in  Ency.  Br.  See,  also,  Making  of  England,  Chap.  VII., 
note,  p.  370. 


l6  LANDS,  LETTERS,  £-  Kh\'GS. 

cliffs  of  north-eastern  England.  This  was  Beda,  — 
respected  in  his  own  day  for  his  industry,  piety, 
straightforward  honesty  —  and  so  followed  by  the 
respect  of  succeeding  generations  as  to  get  and  car- 
ry the  name  of  the  VenerahJe  Beda.  Though  fam- 
iliar with  the  people's  language,*  and  with  Greek, 
he  wrote  in  monkish  Latin — redeemed  by  classic 
touches  —  and  passed  his  life  in  the  monastery  at 
Jarrow,  which  is  on  the  Tyne,  near  the  coast  of 
Durham,  a  little  to  the  westward  of  South  Shields. 
An  ancient  church  is  still  standing  amid  the  niiiis 
of  the  monastic  walls,  and  a  heavy,  straight-backed 
chaii-  of  oak  (which  would  satisfy  the  most  zealous 
antiquarian  by  its  ugliness)  is  still  guarded  in  the 
chancel,  and  is  called  Beda's  Chair. 

Six  hundred  pupils  gathered  about  him  there,  in 
the  old  days,  to  be  taught  in  physics,  grammar, 
rhetoric,  music,  and   I  know  not  what  besides.     So 


*  "  During  his  last  days  verses  of  his  own  English 
tongue  broke  from  time  to  time  from  the  master's  lip  — 
rude  runes  that  told  how  before  the  '  need-fare,'  Death's 
.'^tern  '  must  go,'  none  can  enough  bethink  him  what  is  to 
be  his  doom  for  good  or  ill.  The  tears  of  Beda's  scliolars 
mingled  with  his  song.  So  the  days  rolled  on  to  Ascension 
tide,"  etc. 


KING  ALFRED.  17 

learned  and  true  was  he,  that  the  Pope  would  have 
called  him  to  Rome  ;  but  he  loved  better  the  wooded 
Tyne  banks,  and  the  gray  moorlands,  and  the  labors 
of  his  own  monastery.  There  he  lived  out  an  honest, 
a  plodding,  an  earnest,  and  a  hopeful  life.  And  as 
I  read  the  sympathetic  story  of  its  end,  and  of  how 
the  old  man  —  his  work  all  done  —  lifted  up  a  broken 
voice  —  on  his  last  day — amidst  his  scholars,  to  the 
Gloria  in  Excehis  —  I  bethink  me  of  his  last  eulogist, 
the  young  historian,  who  within  a  few  months  only 
after  sketching  that  tender  picture  of  his  great  fore- 
runner in  the  paths  of  British  history,  laid  down  his 
brilHant  pen  —  his  work  only  half  done,  and  died, 
away  from  his  home,  at  Mentone,  on  the  shores  of 
the  Mediterranean. 

King  Alfred. 

A  half  century  after  the  death  of  Beda  began  the 
Danish  invasions,  under  which,  monasteries  churches 
schools  went  down  in  a  flood  of  blood  and  fire.  As 
we  read  of  that  devastation  —  the  record  covering 
only  a  half-page  of  the  old  Saxon  Chronicle  (begun 
after  Beda's  time)  —  it  seems  an  incident ;  yet  the  pi- 
ratic storm,  with  intermittent  fury,  stretches  over  a 


l8  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &^  KLXGS. 

century  and  more  of  ruin.  It  was  stayed  eflfectively 
for  a  time  when  the  great  Alfred  came  to  full  power. 

I  do  not  deal  much  in  dates  :  but  you  should 
have  a  positive  date  for  this  great  English  king: 
a  thousand  years  ago  (889)  fairly  marks  the  pe- 
riod when  he  was  in  the  prime  of  life  —  superin- 
tending, very  likely,  the  building  of  a  British  fleet 
upon  the  Pool,  below  Loudon.  He  was  born  at 
Wantage,  in  Berkshire,  a  little  to  the  south  of  the 
Great  Western  Railway  ;  and  in  a  glade  near  to  the 
site  of  the  old  Saxon  j)alace,  is  still  shown  what  is 
called  Alfred's  Well.  In  the  year-  1849  his  birthday 
was  celebrated,  after  the  lajjse  of  a  thousand  years 
—  so  keen  are  these  British  cousins  of  ours  to  keep 
alive  aU  their  great  memories.  And  Alfred's  is  a 
memory  worth  keeping.  He  had  advantages  —  as 
we  should  say  —  of  foreign  travel ;  as  a  boy  he  went 
to  Rome,  traversing  Italy  and  the  Continent.  If 
we  could  only  get  a  good  story  of  that  cross-country 
trip  of  his  ! 

We  know  little  more  than  that  he  came  to  high 
honor  at  Rome,  was  anointed  king  there,  before  yet 
he  had  come  to  x-oyalty  at  home.  He  makes  also  a 
second  visit  in  company  ^^•ith  his  father  Ethelwolf  : 


KIXG  ALFRED.  19 

and  on  their  retm-n  the  Ethel  wolf  reUeves  the 
tedium  of  travel  by  marrying  the  twelve-Tear  old 
daughter  of  Chai'les  the  Bald  of  France.  Those 
were  times  of  extraordinary'  daiing. 

The  great  king  had  throughout  a  most  pictu- 
resque and  adventurous  life  :  he  is  hai'd  pushed  by 
the  Danes  —  by  rivals  —  by  his  own  family ;  one  while 
a  wanderer  on  the  moors  —  another  time  disguised 
as  minstrel  in  the  enemy's  camp  ;  but  always  high- 
heai-ted,  always  hopefvd,  always  working.  He  is  op- 
pressed by  the  pall  of  ignorance  that  lays  over  that 
loi'dly  reach  of  his  kingdom  :  "  Scarce  a  priest  have 
I  found,"  says  he,  "  south  of  the  Thames  who  can 
render  Latin  into  English,"  He  is  not  an  apt 
scholar  himself,  bvit  he  toils  at  learning ;  his  ab- 
bots help  him  ;  he  revises  old  chi'onicles,  and 
makes  people  to  know  of  Beda  ;  he  has  boys  taught 
to  write  in  EugUsh ;  gives  himseK  with  love  to  the 
rendering  of  Boethius'  "  Consolation  of  Philoso- 
phy." He  adopts  its  reasoning,  and  plants  his  hope 
on  the  creed — 

1st.  That  a  wise  God  governs. 

2d.    That  all  suffering  may  be  made  helpfuL 

3d.    That  God  is  chiefest  good. 


20  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KhVCS. 

4th,  That  only  the  good  are  happy. 

5th.  That  the  foreknowledge  of  God  does  not  con. 
fliet  with  Free-will. 

These  would  seem  to  carry  even  now  the  pith  and 
gerrn  of  the  broadest  theologic  teachings. 

It  is  a  noble  and  a  picturesque  figure  —  that  of 
King  Alfi'ed  —  which  we  see,  looking  back  over  the 
vista  of  a  thousand  years  ;  better  it  would  seem  than 
that  of  King  Arthur  to  weave  tales  around,  and 
iUumine  Avith  the  heat  and  the  flame  of  poesy.  Yet 
poets  of  those  times  and  of  all  succeeding  times 
have  strangely  neglected  this  august  and  royal 
type  of  manhood. 

After  him  came  again  weary  Danish  wars  and 
wild  blood-letting  and  ignorance  surging  over  the 
land,  save  where  a  little  light  played  fitfully  around 
such  gi'eat  religious  houses  as  those  of  York  and 
Canterbury.  It  was  the  dreary  Tenth  Century,  on 
the  threshold  of  which  he  had  died  —  the  very  core 
and  kernel  of  the  Dark  Ages,  when  the  wisest 
thought  the  end  of  things  was  drawing  nigh,  and 
strong  men  quaked  with  dread  at  sight  of  an 
eclipse,  or  comet,  or  at  sound  of  the  rumble  of  an 
earthquake.      It   was   a   time   and   a    condition   of 


KING  ALFRED.  21 

gloom  wliich  made  people  pardon,  and  even  relish 
such  a  dismal  poem  as  that  of  "  The  Grave,"  which 
—  though  bearing  thii'teenth  century  form  —  may 
well  in  its  germ  have  been  a  fungal  outgrowth  of 
the  wide-spread  hopelessness  of  this  epoch :  — 

For  thee  was  a  house  built 

Ere  thou  wert  born  ; 

For  thee  was  a  mold  meant 

Ere  thou  of  mother  cam'st. 

But  it  is  not  made  ready 

Nor  its  depth  measured, 

Nor  is  it  seen 

How  long  it  shall  be. 

Now  I  bring  thee 

Where  thou  shall  be 

And  I  shall  measure  thee 

And  the  mold  afterward. 

Doorless  is  that  house 

And  dark  is  It  within  ; 

There  thou  art  fast  detained 

And  death  hath  the  key 

Loathsome  is  that  earth-housa 

And  grim  within  to  dwell, 

And  worms  shall  divide  thee. 

From  the  death  of  Alfred  (901)  to  the  Norman 
Conquest  (1066)  there  was  monkish  work  done  in 
shape  of  Homihes,  Chronicles,  grammars  of  Latin 


22  LANDS,  LETTERS,  dr-  AVNG.'?. 

and  English  —  the  language  settling-  more  and  more 
into  something  hke  a  determined  form  of  what  is 
now  called  Anglo-Saxon.  But  in  that  lapse  of 
years  I  note  only  three  historic  incidents,  which 
by  reason  of  the  traditions  tkrown  about  them, 
can-y  a  piquant  literary  flavor. 

Canute  and  Godiva. 

Tl\e  first  is  when  the  famous  Canute,  king  of  both 
England  and  Denmark,  and  having  strong  taste  for 
song  and  music  and  letters,  rows  by  the  towers  of 
a  great  East-England  religious  house,  and  as  he 
drifts  with  the  tide,  composes  (if  we  may  trust 
tradition)  a  snatch  of  verse  which  has  come  down 
to  us  in  a  thirteenth  century  form,  about  the 
pleasant  singing  of  the  Monks  of  Ely.  Words- 
worth has  embalmed  the  matter  in  one  of  his  Ee» 
clesiastic  Sonnets  (xxx.)  : 

A  pleasant  music  floats  along  the  mere, 

From  monks  in  Ely  chanting  service  high, 

While  as  Canute  the  king  is  rowing  by  ; 

My  oarsman  quoth  the  mighty  king,  draw  near 

That  we  the  sweet  songs  of  the  monks  may  hear. 

He  listens  (all  past  conquests  and  all  schemes 


CANUTE  AND  GODIVA.  23 

Of  future  vanisliing  like  empty  dreams) 

Heart-touched,  aud  haplj  not  without  a  tear, 

The  royal  minstrel,  ere  the  Choir  is  still, 

While  his  free  barge  skims  the  smooth  flood  along 

Gives  to  the  rapture  an  accordant  Rhyme 

O  suffering  Eartli !  be  thankful  ;  sternest  Clime 

And  rudest  Age  are  subject  to  the  thrill 

Of  heaven-descended  piety  and  song. 

I  think  3'ou  -will  never  go  under  the  wondrous 
arches  of  Ely  Cathedral  —  and  you  should  go  there 
if  you  ever  travel  into  the  eastern  counties  of  Eng- 
land —  without  thinking  of  King  Canute  and  of 
that  wondrous  singing  of  the  monks,  eight  hundred 
years  ago. 

The  second  historic  incident  of  which  I  spoke,  is 
the  mui-der  of  King  Duncan  by  Macbeth  in  the  year 
1039,  some  twenty-five  years  before  the  Norman 
Conquest.  I  don't  think  you  want  any  refreshing 
about  Macbeth. 

The  third  incident  is  of  humbler  tone,  yet  it  went 
to  show  great  womanly  devotion,  and  lifted  a  tax 
from  the  heads  of  a  whole  towns-people.  I  refer  to 
the  tradition  of  Earl  Leofric  of  Mercia  and  the  Lady 
Godiva  of  Coventry,  based  in  the  main,  without 
doubt,  upon  actual  occurrence,  and  the  subject  for 


24  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KINGS. 

centuries    of   anuual    commemoration.*     Tennyson 
tells,  in  his  always  -witching  way,  how 

She  rode  forth  clothed  on  with  chastity  : 
The  deep  air  listened  round  her  as  she  rode, 

the  barking  cur 

Made  her  cheek  flame ;  her  palfry's  foot-fall  shot 

Light  horror  thro'  her  pulses : 

One  low  churl  compact  of  thankless  earth 

Peep'd — but  his  eyes,  before  they  had  their  will 

Were  shrivelled  into  darkness  in  his  head. 

And  she,  that  knew  not,  pass'd  ;  and  all  at  once 

With  twelve  great  shocks  of  sound,  the  shameless  noon 

Was  clash'd  and  hammered  from  a  hundred  towers, 

One  after  one  :   But  even  then  she  gained 

Her  bower  ;  whence  re-issuing,  robed  and  crowned, 

To  meet  her  lord,  she  took  the  tax  away 

And  built  herself  an  everlasting  name. 

Observe  —  that  I  call  tip  these  modern  wi'iters  and 
their  language,  out  of  theu-  turn  as  may  seem  to 
you,  only  that  I  may  plant  more  distinctly  in  your 

*  It  is  of  record  in  Matthew  op  Westminster,  a  Bene- 
dictine monk  of  the  fourteenth  century — Plores  IIMoriarum 
— first  printed  in  1567.  '■'■  Nuda  equum  ascendens,  crines  ca- 
pitis et  tricas  dissolve7is,  cwpus  suum  totum,  prater  antra 
candidissima  inde  veladt."  The  tradition  is  subject  of  crude 
mention  in  tlie  Polyolbion  of  Drayton  ;  I  also  refer  the 
reader  to  the  charming  Leofric  and  Godiva  of  Landor. 


WILLIAM    THE  NORMAN.  25 

thought  the  old  incidents  to  which  their  words  re- 
late. It  is  as  if  I  were  speaking  to  you  of  some  long- 
gone  Hne  of  ancestors,  and  on  a  sudden  should  call 
up  some  delicate  blond  child  and  say  —  This  one  is 
in  the  line  of  direct  descent ;  she  bears  the  same  old 
name,  she  murmurs  the  same  old  tunes ;  and  this 
shimmer  of  gold  in  her  hair  is  what  shone  on  the 
heads  of  the  good  Saxon  foreparents. 

William  the  Korinan. 

We  now  come  to  a  date  to  be  remembered,  and 
in  the  neighborhood  of  which  our  first  morning's 
talk  wiU  come  to  an  end.  It  is  the  date  of  the  Nor- 
man Conquest — 1066  —  that  being  the  year  of  the 
Battle  of  Hastings,  when  the  brave  Harold,  last  of 
the  Saxon  kings  went  down,  shot  through  the  eye ; 
and  the  lithe,  clean-faced,  smirking  William  of  Nor- 
mandy "  gat  him  "  the  throne  of  England.  These 
new-comers  were  not  far-away  cousins  of  our  Saxon 
and  Danish  forefathers  ;  onl}^  so  recently  as  the 
reign  of  Alfred  had  they  taken  permanent  foothold 
in  that  pleasant  Norman  country. 

But  they  have  not  brought  the  Norse  speech  of 


26  LA. YDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

the  old  home  land  with  them :  they  have  taken  to  a 
Prankish  language  —  we  will  call  it  Noimau  French 
—  which  is  thenceforth  to  blend  with  the  Saxonism 
of  Alfred,  until  two  centuries  or  more  later,  our 
own  mother  English  —  the  English  of  Chaucer  and 
of  Shakespeai'e  —  is  evolved  out  of  the  union.  Not 
only  a  new  tongue,  do  these  conquerors  bring  with 
them,  but  madrigals  and  ballads  and  rhyming  his- 
tories ;  they  have  great  contempt  for  the  stolid, 
lazy-going  Latin  records  of  the  Saxon  Chroniclers  ; 
they  love  a  song  better.  In  the  very  face  of  the 
armies  at  Hastings,  their  great  minstrel  Taillefer 
had  lifted  up  Lis  voice  to  chant  the  glories  of  Ko- 
land,  about  which  all  the  histories  of  the  time  will 
tell  you. 

It  was  a  new  civihzation  (not  altogether  Christian) 
out-topping  the  old.  These  Normans  knew  more  of 
war  —  knew  more  of  courts  —  knew  more  of  affairs. 
They  loved  money  and  they  loved  conquest.  To 
love  one  in  those  days,  was  to  love  the  other.  King 
WiUiam  swept  the  monasteries  clean  of  those  igno- 
rant priests  who  had  dozed  there,  from  the  time  of 
Alfred,  and  put  in  Norman  Monks  with  nicely 
clipped  hair,  who  could  construe  Latin  after  latest 


WILLIAM  THE  NORMAN.  27 

Norman  rules.  He  new  parcelled  the  lands,  and 
gave  estates  to  those  who  could  hold  and  manage 
them.  It  was  as  if  a  new,  sharp  eager  man  of  busi- 
ness had  on  a  sudden  come  to  the  handling  of  some 
old  sleepil}'  conducted  counting-room  ;  he  cuts  off 
the  useless  heads  ;  he  squares  the  books  ;  he  stops 
waste  ;  pity  or  tenderness  have  no  hearing  in  his 
shop. 

I  mentioned  not  far  back  an  old  Saxon  Chronicle, 
which  all  dowTi  the  years,  from  shortly  after  Beda's 
day,  had  been  kept  aUve  —  sometimes  under  the 
hands  of  one  monastery,  sometimes  of  another ;  here 
is  what  its  Saxon  Scribe  of  the  eleventh  centuiy  says 
of  this  new-come  and  conquering  Norman  King  :  It 
is  good  Saxon  history,  and  in  good  Saxon  style  :  — 

"King  William  was  a  very  wise  man,  and  very  rich,  more 
worshipful  and  strong  than  any  of  his  foregangers.  He  was 
mild  to  good  men  who  loved  God  ;  and  stark  beyond  all 
bounds  to  those  who  withsaid  his  will.  He  had  Earls  in  his 
bonds  who  had  done  against  his  will ;  Bishops  he  set  off 
their  bishoprics  ;  Abbots  off  their  abbotries,  and  thanes  in 
prison.  By  his  cunning  he  was  so  thoroughly  acquainted 
with  England,  that  there  is  not  a  hide  of  land  of  which  he 
did  not  know,  both  who  had  it,  and  what  was  its  worth.  He 
planted  a  great  preserue  for  deer,  and  he  laid  down  laws 
therewith,  that  whoever  should  slay  hart  or  hind  should  be 


28  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &-  K7NGS. 

blinded.  He  forbade  the  harts  and  also  the  boars  to  be 
killed.     As  greatly  did  he  love  the  tall  deer  as  if  he  were 

their  father He  took  from  his  subjects  many 

marks  of  gold,  and  many  hundred  pounds  of  silver  ;  and 
that  he  took  —  some  by  right,  and  some  by  mickle  might 
for  very  little  need.  He  had  fallen  into  avarice  ;  and 
greediness  he  loved  withal.  Among  other  things  is  not  to 
be  forgotten  the  good  peace  that  he  made  in  this  land  ;  so 
that  a  man  who  had  anj'  confidence  in  himself  might  go  over 
his  realm,  with  his  bosom  full  of  gold,  unhurt.  Nor  durst 
any  man  slay  another  man  had  he  done  ever  so  great  evil  to 
the  other.  .  .  .  Brytland  (Wales)  was  in  his  power,  and 
he  therein  wrought  castles,  and  completely  ruled  over  that 
race  of  men.  .  .  .  Certainly  in  his  time  men  had  great 
hardship,  and  very  many  injuries.  .  .  .  His  rich  men 
moaned,  and  the  jioor  men  murmured  ;  but  he  was  so  hard 
that  he  recked  not  the  hatred  of  them  all.  For  it  was  need 
they  should  follow  the  King's  will,  if  they  wished  to  live, 
or  to  have  lands  or  goods.  Alas,  that  any  man  should  be 
so  moody,  and  should  so  puff  up  himself,  and  think  him- 
self above  all  other  men  !  May  Almighty  God  show  mercy 
to  his  soul,  and  grant  him  forgiveness  of  his  sins." 

There  are  other  contemporary  Anglo-Saxon  annal- 
ists, and  there  are  the  rhyming  chroniclers  of  Nor- 
man blood,  who  put  a  better  color  upon  the  quali- 
ties of  King  William ;  but  I  think  there  is  no  one  of 
them,  who  even  in  moments  of  rhetorical  exaltation, 
thinks  of  putting  William's  sense  of  justice,  or  his 
kindness  of  heart,  before  his  greed  or  his  self-love. 


HAROLD   THE  SAXON.  29 


Harold  the  Saxon. 

The  late  Lord  Ly tton  ( Bulwer )  gave  to  tLIs  per- 
iod and  to  the  closing  years  of  Harold  one  of  the 
most  elaborate  of  his  Historic  Studies.  He  availed 
himseK  shrewdly  of  all  the  most  picturesque  aspects 
(and  they  were  very  many)  in  the  career  of  Harold, 
and  found  startling  historic  facts  enough  to  supply 
to  the  full  his  passion  for  exaggerated  melodrama. 
There  are  brilliant  passages  in  his  book,*  and  a  great 
wealth  of  archseologic  material  ;  he  shows  us  the 
remnants  of  old  Roman  villas  —  the  crude  home- 
liness of  Saxon  house  surroundings  —  the  assem- 
blage of  old  Palace  Councils.  Danish  battle-axes, 
and  long-bearded  Saxon  thanes,  and  fiery-headed 
Welshmen  contrast  with  the  poHshed  and  insidious 
Normans.  Nor  is  there  lacking  a  hea^y  and  much 
over-weighted  quota  of  love-making  and  misfortune, 
and  joy  and  death.     Tennyson  has  taken  the  same 

*  Harold :  the  Last  of  the  Saxon  Kings  ;  first  published  in 
1848  and  dedicated  to  the  Hon.  C.  T.  D'Eyncourt,  M.P., 
■whose  valuable  library  —  says  Bclaver  —  supplied  much  of 
the  material  needed  for  the  prosecution  of  the  work, 


30  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

subject,  using  the  same  skeleton  of  story  for  his 
play  of  Harold.  It  would  seem  that  he  has  depended 
on  the  romance  of  Bulwer  for  his  archaeology  ;  and 
indeed  the  book  is  dedicated  to  the  younger  Lord 
Lytton  (better  known  in  the  literaiy  world  as 
"  Owen  Meredith ").  As  a  working  play,  it  is 
counted,  like  all  of  Tennyson's  —  a  failure;  but 
there  are  passages  of  exceeding  beauty. 

He  pictures  the  King  Harold  —  the  hero  that  he  is 
—  but  with  a  veil  of  true  Saxon  gloom  lowering  over 
him :  he  tells  the  story  of  his  brother  Tostig's  jeal- 
ous wTath,  — always  in  arms  against  Harold  :  he  tells 
of  the  hasty  oath,  which  the  king  in  young  days 
had  sworn  to  "William  in  Normandy,  never  to  claim 
England's  throne  :  and  this  oath  hangs  like  a  cloud 
over  the  current  of  Harold's  story.  The  giief,  and 
noble  devotion  of  poor  Edith,  the  betrothed  bride 
of  the  king,  whom  he  is  compelled  by  a  devilish  di- 
plomacy to  discard  —  is  woven  like  a  golden  thread 
into  the  woof  of  the  tale  :  and  Aldwyth,  the  queen, 
whom  Harold  did  not  and  can  never  love,  is  set  off 
against  Edith  —  in  Tennyson's  own  unmatchable  way 
in  the  last  scenes  of  the  tragedy. 

We  are  in  the  camp  at  Hastings :  the  battle  waits ; 


HAROLD    THE  SAXON,  31 

a  vision  of  Norman  saints,  on  whose  bones  Harold 
had  sworn  that  dreadful  oath,  conies  to  him  in  his 
trance  :  —  They  say  —  (these  wraiths  of  saints)  — 

O  hapless  Hiirold  !   king  but  for  an  hour ! 
Thou  swarest  falsely  by  our  blessed  bones, 
We  give  our  voice  against  thee  out  of  Heaven  I 
And  vrarn  him  against  the  fatal  arrow. 

And  Harold  —  waking  —  says  — 

Away  ! 
My  battle-axe  against  3'our  voices ! 

And  then  —  remembering  that  old  Edward  the 
Confessor  had  told  him  on  his  deathbed  that  he 
should  die  by  an  aiTow  —  his  hope  faints. 

The  king's  last  word  —  "the  arrow,"  I  shall  die  : 
I  die  for  England  then,  who  lived  for  England. 
What  nobler  ?     Man  must  die. 
I  cannot  fall  into  a  falser  world  — 
I  have  done  no  man  wrong.     .     . 

Edith  (his  betrothed)  comes  in  — 

Edith !  —  Edith  ! 
Get  thou  into  thy  cloister,  as  the  king 
Will'd  it :     .     ,     .     There,  the  great  God  of  Truth 
Fill  all  thine  hours  with  peace !     A  lying  Devil 
Ilath  haunted  me  —  mine  oath  —  mv  wife  —  I  fain 


32  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KINGS. 

Had  made  my  marriage  not  a  lie  ;  I  could  not : 

Thou  art  my  bride  !   and  thou,  in  after  years, 

Praying  perchance  for  this  poor  soul  of  mine 

In  cold,  white  cells,  beneath  an  icy  moon. 

This  memory  to  thee  !  —  and  this  to  England, 

My  legacy  of  war  against  the  Pope, 

From  child  to  child,  from  Pope  to  Pope,  from  Age  to  Age, 

Till  the  sea  wash  her  level  with  her  shores, 

Or  till  the  Pope  be  Christ's. 

Aldwyth,  the  queen,  glides  in,  and  seeing  Edith, 
says  — 

Away  from  him  !     Away ! 

Edith  says  (we  can  imagine  lier  sweet  plaintive* 
ness)  — 

I  will.     ...      I  have  not  spoken  to  the  king 
One  word  :  and  one  I  mut^t.      Farewell ! 

And  she  offers  to  go. 

But  Harold,  beckoning  with  a  grand  gesture  of 
authority  — 

Not  yet ! 
Stay !     The  king  commands  thee,  woman  \ 

And  he  turns  to  Aldwyth,  from  whose  kinsmen  he 
had  expected  aid  — 

Have  thy  two  brethren  sent  tlieir  forces  in  ? 
Aldwyth  —  Xay,  I  fear  not. 


HAROLD    THE  SAXON.  33 

And  Harold  blazes  upon  her  — 

Then  there's  no  force  in  thee  ! 
Thou  didst  possess  thyself  of  Edward's  ear 
To  part  me  from  the  woman  that  I  loved. 

Thou  hast  been  false  to  England  and  to  me ! 
As  —  in  some  sort  —  I  have  been  false  to  thee. 
Leave  me.     No  more.  —  Pardon  on  both  sides.  —  Go! 

Aldvyyth  —  Alas,  mj  lord,  I  loved  thee  ! 
O  Harold  !  husband  !     Shall  we  meet  again  ? 

Harold  —  After  the  battle  —  after  the  battle.     Go. 

Aldvyyfh  —  I  go.     {Aside.)    That  I  could  stab   her 
standing  there !     {Exit  Aldvyyth.) 

Edith  —  Alas,  my  lord,  she  loved  thee. 

Harold —  Never!  never! 

Edith  —  I  saw  it  in  her  eyes  ! 

Harold  —  I  see  it  in  thine  ! 

And  not  on  thee  —  nor  England  —  fall  God's  doom  ! 

Edith  —  On  thee  ?  on  me.     And  thou  art  England  I 
Alfred 
Was  England.     Ethelred  was  nothing.     England 
Is  but  her  king,  as  thou  art  Harold  1 

Harold—                                           Edith, 
The  sign  in  Heaven  —  the  sudden  blast  at  sea  — 
My  fatal  oath  —  the  dead  saints  —  the  dark  dreams  — 
The  Pope's  Anathema — the  Holy  Rood 
That  bow'd  to  me  at  Waltham  —  Edith,  if 
I,  the  last  English  King  of  England 

Edith —  No, 

First  of  a  line  that  coming  from  the  people, 
And  chosen  by  the  people 


34  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

Harold  —  And  figlitiug  for 

And  dying  for  the  people 

Look,  I  will  bear  thy  blessing  into  the  battle 
And  front  the  doom  of  God. 


And  he  did  affront  it  bravely  ;  and  the  arrow  did 
slay  him,  near  to  the  spot  where  the  Saxon  standard 
flew  to  the  breeze  on  that  fateful  day. 

The  play  from  which  I  have  quoted  may  have 
excess  of  elaboration  and  an  over-finesse  in  respect 
of  details  :  but  there  are  great  bold  reaches  of 
descriptive  power,  a  nobility  of  sentiment,  and 
everywhere  tender  and  winning  touches,  which  will 
be  very  sm-e  to  give  to  the  drama  of  Tennyson  per- 
manence and  historic  dignity,  and  keep  it  always  a 
literary  waymark  in  the  fields  we  have  gone  over. 
The  scene  of  that  decisive  contest  is  less  than  a  two 
hours'  ride  away  from  London  (by  the  Southeastern 
Eailwaj')  at  a  village  called  Battle  —  seven  miles 
from  the  coast  line  at  Hastings  —  in  the  midst  of  a 
beautiful  rolling  country,  with  scattered  copses  of 
ancient  wood  and  a  great  wealth  of  wild  flowers  — 
(for  which  the  district  is  remarkable)  sparkling 
over  the  fields. 

The    Conqueror    built    a    great    abbey    there  — 


HAROLD    THE  SAXOX.  35 

Battle  Abbey  —  whose  ruins  are  visited  by  hundreds 
every  year.  A  large  portion  of  the  old  religious 
house,  kept  in  excellent  repair,  and  very  charmino- 
with  its  growth  of  ivy  and  its  embowering  shade, 
is  held  in  private  hands  —  being  the  occasional 
residence  of  the  Duke  of  Cleveland.  Amid  the 
ruins  the  usher  will  guide  one  to  a  crypt  of  the 
ancient  chapel  —  whose  soHd  Norman  arches  date 
back  to  the  time  of  the  Conqueror,  and  which  is 
said  to  mark  the  veiy  spot  on  which  Harold  fell, 
wounded  to  the  death,  on  that  memorable  day  of 
Hastings. 


CHAPTER  n. 

I  RECUR  a  moment  to  what  was  said  in  our 
opening  talk  —  as  a  boy  will  wisely  go  back  a 
little  way  for  a  better  jump  forward.  I  spoke  —  the 
reader  will  remember  —  of  ringing,  Celtic  war-songs, 
which  seemed  to  be  all  of  literature  that  was  drift- 
ing in  the  atmosphere,  when  we  began  :  then  there 
came  a  gleam  of  Christian  light  and  of  monkish 
learning  tln-o'  St.  Augustine  in  Southern  England  •, 
and  another  gleam  through  lona,  and  Lindisfarne, 
from  Irish  sources  ;  then  came  Ceedmon's  Bible 
singing,  —  which  had  echo  far  down  in  Milton's  day; 
next  the  good  old  Beda,  telling  the  story  of  these 
things  ;  then  —  a  thousand  years  ago,  — the  Great 
Alfred,  at  once  a  book-maker  and  a  King.  Before 
him  and  after  him  came  a  dreary  welter  of  Danish 
wars  ;  the  great  Canute  —  tradition  says  —  chirping 
a  song  in  the  middle  of  them ;  and  last,  the  slaughter 


GEOFFREY  OF  MONMOUTH.  37 

of  Hastings,  where  the  Saxon   Harold  went  do-vsTi, 
and  the  conquering  Norman  came  up. 

Geoffrey  of  Monmouth. 

We  start  to-day  with  an  England  that  has  its 
office-holding  and  governing  peoj^le  speaking  one 
language  —  its  moody  land-holders  and  cultivators 
speaking  another  —  and  its  irascible  Britons  in 
Wales  and  Cumbria  and  Cornwall  speaking  yet  an- 
other. Conquered  people  are  never  in  much  mood 
for  song-singing  or  for  history-making.  So  there  is 
little  or  nothing  from  English  sources  for  a  century  or 
more.  Even  the  old  Saxon  Chronicle  kept  by  monks 
(at  Peterboro  in  this  time),  does  not  grow  into  a 
stately  record,  and  in  the  twelfth  century  on  the  year 
of  the  death  of  liang  Stephen,  dies  out  altogether. 

But  there  is  a  Welsh  monk  —  Geoffrey  of  Mon- 
mouth*—  living  just  on  the  borders  of  Wales,  and 
probably  not  therefore  brought  into  close  connec- 
tion with  this  new  Norman  element  —  who  •m.'ites 

*  Geoffrey  op  Monmouth  (Bisliop  of  St.  Asaph),  d. 
1154.  His  CroniC'On,  sive  Hisioria  Britonum  first  printed  in 
1508  :  translated  into  Eng.,  1718.  Vid.  WrighVs  Emiys  Arch. 
8ab.,  1861. 


38  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KLWGS. 

(about  one  hundred  years  after  the  Conquest)  a  half- 
earnest  and  mostly-fabulous  British  Chronicle.  He 
professes  to  have  received  its  main  points  from  a 
Walter  —  somebody,  "who  had  rare  old  bookish  se- 
crets of  history,  derived  from  Brittany,  in  his  keep- 
ing. You  ^vill  remember,  perhajDs,  how  another 
and  very  much  later  writer  —  sometimes  known  as 
Geoffrey  Crayon — once  wrote  a  History  of  New  York, 
claiming  that  it  was  made  up  from  the  MSS.  of  a 
certain  Diediich  Knickerbocker :  I  think  that  per- 
haps the  same  sense  of  quiet  humor  belonged  to  both 
these  Geoffreys.  Certainly  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth's 
Chronicle  bears  about  the  same  relation  to  British 
matters  of  fact  which  the  Knickerbocker  story  of  New 
York  bears  to  the  colonial  annals  of  our  great  city. 

The  fables  which  were  told  m  this  old  Monmouth 
Chronicle  are  more  present  in  men's  minds  to-day 
than  the  things  which  were  real  in  it :  there  was, 
for  instance,  the  fable  about  King  Lear  (who  does 
not  know  King  Lear  ?) :  then,  there  were  the  greater 
fables  about  good  King  Ai-thur  and  his  avenging 
Caliburn  (who  does  not  know  King  Arthur  ?}. 
These  two  stories  are  embalmed  now  in  Literature, 
and  will  never  perish. 


KING  ARTHUR  LEGENDS. 


39 


King  Arthur  Legends. 

Those  Arthur  legends  had  been  floating  about  in 
ballad  or  song,  but  they  never  had  much  mention  in 
anything  pretending  to  be  history  *  until  Geofirey  of 
Monmouth's  day.  There  is  nothing  of  them  in  the 
Saxon  Chronicle  :  nothing  of  them  in  Beda :  King 
Alfred  never  mentions  King  Arthur. 

But  was  there  ever  a  King  Arthur  ?  Probably : 
but  at  what  precise  date  is  uncertain :  probable,  too, 
that  he  had  his  court  —  as  many  legends  run  — 
one  time  at  Caerleon,  "upon  Usk,"  and  again  at 
Camelot.f  Caerleon  is  still  to  be  found  by  the  cvi- 
rious  traveller,  in  pleasant  Monmouthshire,  just  upon 
the  borders  of  Wales,  with  Tintern  Abbey  and  the 
grand  ruin  of  Chepstow  not  far  off ;  and  a  gTeat 
amphitheatre  among  the  hills  (very  likely  of  Koman 

*  Such  exception  as  the  name  warrants,  must  be  made  in 
favor  of  NenniuS,  §  50,  a.d.  452. 

\  Other  important  Arthurian  localities  belong  to  the  north 
and  west  of  England  ;  and  whoso  is  curious  in  such  matters, 
will  read  with  interest  Mr.  Stuart  Glennie's  ingenious  ar- 
gument to  prove  that  Scotland  was  the  great  cradle  of  Ar. 
thurian  Romance.  Early  English  Text  Society,  Part  ni., 
1869. 


40  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  A'LVGS 

origiii)  with  greeu  turf  upon  it,  aud  green  hill, 
sides  hemming  it  in— is  still  called  King  Arthur's 
Eound  Table. 

Camelot  is  not  so  easy  to  trace  :  the  name  will  not 
be  found  in  the  guide-books  :  but  in  Somersetshii-e, 
in  a  little  parish,  called  "  Queen's  Camel,"  are  the  re- 
mains of  vast  entrenchments,  said  to  have  belonged 
to  the  tom-ney  ground  of  Camelot.  A  little  branch  of 
the  Yeo  Eiver  (you  will  remember  this  name,  if  you 
have  ever  read  Charles  Kiugsley's  "  Westward,  Ho " 
— a  book  you  should  read) — a  little  branch,  I  say,  of 
the  Yeo  runs  through  the  parish,  and  for  irrigating 
purposes  is  held  back  by  dykes,  and  then  shot,  shin- 
ing, over  the  green  meadows  :  hence,  Tennyson  may 
say  truly,  as  he  does  in  his  Idyls  of  the  King  — 

"  Tliej'  vanislied  panic-stricken,  like  a  shoal 
Of  darting  fish,  that  on  a  summer's  moni 
Adown  the  crystal  dykes  at  Caimlot, 
Come  slipping  o'er  their  shadow,  on  the  sand." 

There  are  some  featui-es  of  this  ancient  fable  of 
King  Arthur,  which  are  of  much  older  literary  date 
than  the  times  w^e  are  now  speaking  of.  Thus  "  the 
dusky  barge,"  that  a^^pears  on  a  sudden  —  coming 
to  carry  off  the  dying  King,  — 


KING  ARTHUR  LEGENDS.  41 

•* whose  decks  are  dense  with  stately  forms, 

Black  stoled,  black-hooded,  like  a  dream  —  by  these 
Three  queens  with  crowns  of  gold,  and  from  them  rose 
A  cry  that  shivered  to  the  tingling  stars " 

has  a  very  old  germ  ;  —  Soraetliiug  not  unlike  this 
watery  bier,  to  carry  a  dead  hero  into  the  Silences, 
belongs  to  the  opening  of  that  ancient  poem  of 
Beowulf  —  which  all  students  of  early  English 
know  and  prize  —  but  which  did  not  grow  on 
English  soil,  and  therefore  does  not  belong  to  our 
present  quest.  *  The  brand  Excalibur,  too,  which 
is  thrown  into  the  sea  by  King  Ai-thui^'s  friend, 
and  which  is  caught  by  an  arm  clothed  in  white 
samite,  rising  from  the  mere,  and  three  times  bran- 
dished, has  its  prototype  in  the  "old  mighty  sword" 
which  is  put  into  the  hands  of  Beowulf  before  he  can 
slay  the  great  sea-dragon  of  the  Scandinavian  fable. 
Now,  these  Arthurian  stories,  put  into  book  by 

*  The  fable  is  Scandinavian.  The  Anglo-Saxon  version, 
dating  probably  from  the  seventh  century,  makes  it  a  very 
important  way-mark  in  the  linguistic  liistory  of  England. 
Eng.  editions  are  numerous :  among  them  —  those  of  Kemble, 
1833-7 :  Thorpe,  1855  and  1875  :  Arnold,  1876  :  also  (Am. 
ed.)  Harrison,  1883:  Translations  accompany  the  three 
first  named  :  a  more  recent  one  has  appeared  (1883'  by  Dr, 
Garnett  of  Md. 


42  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  A'LVGS. 

Geoffrey  —  a  Latin  book,  for  all  the  monks  wrote  in 
Latin,  though  they  may  have  sung  songs  in  English, 
as  good  father  Aldhelm  did  —  were  presently  caught 
up  b}'  a  romance-wi'itor,  named  Wace,  who  was  liv- 
ing at  Caen,  in  Normandy,  and  whose  knightly 
cousins  (some  say  father  and  titled  baron)  had  come 
over  with  William  the  Conqueror,  —  the  name  being 
long  known  in  Nottinghamshire.  This  Wace  put 
these  Arthur  stories  into  Norman  verse — adding 
somewhat  and  gi^^ng  a  French  air,  which  made  his 
book  sought  after  and  read  in  royal  courts  ;  and  frag- 
ments of  it  were  chanted  by  minstrels  in  castle  halls. 
Then,  this  Arthur  mine  of  Legends  was  explored 
again  by  another  priest  and  Welshman,  who  came 
to  have  some  place  at  Oxford,  where  the  beginnings 
of  the  great  universitj'  were  then  a-brew.  This 
writer,  Walter  Map  *  by  name  —  or  Mapes,  as  he  is 
sometimes  called  —  lived  just  about  the  meeting  of 
the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  when  the  cru- 
sades were  in  full  blast,  and  when  dreams  about  the 

*  Walter  Map,  or  Mapes,  was  born  on  the  borders  of  Wales 
about  1143,  and  was  living  as  Archdeacon  at  Oxford  as  late 
as  1196  :  possibly  this  was  the  Walter  who  supplied  material 
to  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  ;  there  was  however  another 
Walter  (Calienus)  who  was  also  Archdeacon  at  Oxford. 


KING  ARTHUR  LEGENDS.  43 

Holy  SeiDulchre  hovered  rouud  half  the  house  roofs 
of  England.  People  saw  in  visions  the  poor  fam- 
ished pilgrims,  fainting  with  long  marches  toward 
the  far-away  Jerusalem,  and  shot  down  by  cruel 
Saracen  arrows,  within  sight  of  the  Holy  of  Holies. 
So  Walter  Map,  the  priest  (they  say  he  was  one 
while  chaplain  to  Henry  H.),  WTiting  under  light  of 
that  fierce  enthusiasm,  puts  a  religious  element  into 
the  Arthur  stories;  and  it  is  from  him  —  in  all  prob- 
ability—  comes  that  Legend  of  the  Holy  Graal  — 
the  cup  which  caught  the  sacred  blood,  and  which 
saintly  knights  were  to  seek  after,  the  pui-e  Sir 
Galahad  being  the  winning  seeker. 

Nor  did  the  Arthur  legends  stop  here  :  but  an- 
other priestly  man,  Layamon*  —  he,  too,  living 
on  the  borders  of  Wales,  in  the  foraging  gi'ound  of 
Arthur's  knights,  not  far  from  the  present  town  of 
Kidderminster  (which  we  know  carpet-wise) — set 
himself  to  turning  the  Legends,  with  many  addi- 
tions, into  short,  clanging,  alliterative  Saxon  verses, 

*  Layamon's  work  supposed  to  date  (there  being  only  in- 
ternal evidence  of  its  epoch)  in  the  first  decade  of  the  thir- 
teenth century.  Vid.  Marsh  :  English  Language  and  Early 
Literature.  Lecture  IV.  An  edition,  with  translation,  waa 
published  by  Sir  Frederic  Madden  in  1857. 


44  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  AVA'GS. 

with  occasional  rhyme  —  the  first  English  (or  Teu 
tonic)  wording  of  the  story ;  Map's  version  being  in 
Latin  and  French.  He  copies  very  much  from  Wace 
(Le  Brut  d'Angleterre),  but  his  book  is  longer  by  a 
half.  It  has  its  importance,  too  —  this  Layamon  ver- 
sion—  in  the  history  of  the  language.  Of  the  why 
and  the  how,  and  of  its  linguistic  relations  to  the 
Anglo-Saxon,  or  the  modern  tongue,  I  shall  leave 
discussion  in  the  hands  of  those  more  instructed  in 
the  history  of  Early  English.  We  know  this  Laya- 
mon in  our  present  writing,  only  as  a  simple-minded, 
good,  plodding,  West-of-England  priest,  who  asked 
God's  blessing  on  his  work,  and  who  put  that  quaint 
alliterative  jingle  in  it,  which  in  years  after  was  spent 
in  larger  measure  over  the  poem  of  Piers  Plowman, 
and  which,  still  later,  comes  to  even  daintier  usage 
when  the  great  master  —  Spenser 

" fills  with  flowers  fair  Flora's  painted  lap." 

Even  now  we  are  not  through  with  this  story  of 
the  Arthurian  legends :  it  does  not  end  with  the 
priest  Layamon.  After  printing  was  invented,  and 
an  easier  way  of  making  books  was  in  vogue  than 
the  old  one  of  tediously  copying  them  upon  parch- 


KING  ARTHUR  LEGENDS.  45 

ment — I  say  in  this  new  day  of  printing  a  certain 
Sir  Thomas  Mallory,  who  lived  at  the  same  time 
with  Caxton,  the  first  EngHsh  printer,  did,  at  the 
instance,  I  think,  of  that  printer — put  all  these  le- 
gends we  speak  of  into  rather  stifif,  homely  English 
prose  —  copying,  Caxton  tells  us,  from  a  French 
original :  but  no  such  full  French  original  has  been 
found  ;  and  the  presumption  is  that  Mallory  bor- 
rowed (as  so  many  book-makers  did  and  do)  up 
and  down,  from  a  world  of  manuscripts.  And  he 
wrought  so  well  that  his  work  had  great  vogue,  and 
has  come  to  frequent  issue  in  modern  times,  under 
the  hands  of  such  editors  as  Southey,  Wright, 
vStrachey  and  Lanier.  In  the  years  following  Mal- 
lory, succeeding  Avriters  poached  frequently  upon 
the  old  Arthur  preserve — bit  by  bit* — till  at  last, 
in  our  day,  Tennyson  told  his  "  Idyl  of  the  King  "  — 

" and  all  the  people  cried, 

Arthur  is  come  again :   he  cannot  die. 
And  those  that  stood  upon  the  hills  behind 
Repeated  —  Come  again,  and  thrice  as  fair. " 


*  Among  other  direct  Arthurian  gro-wths  may  be  noted 
Morris's  Defence  of  Guinevere;  Arnold's  Tristram  and 
iseult ;  QtJiNET's  Merlin,  Wagner's  Operatic  Poems,  and 
Smith's  Edtdn  of  Deira. 


46  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KINGS. 


Early  Norman  Kings. 

We  come  back  now  from  this  chase  of  Ai'thur,  to 
the  time  of  the  Early  Norman  Kings  :  Orderic  Vi- 
talis,*  of  Normandy,  Wilham  of  Malmsbury,  f  Mat- 
thew Paris,|  William  of  Newburgh,§  (whose  record 
has  just  now  been  re-edited  and  printed  in  England,) 
and  Eoger  of  Hoveden,  |1  were  chroniclers  of  this  j)e- 
riod ;  but  I  am  afraid  these  names  will  hardly  be  kept 
in  mind.  Indeed,  it  is  not  worth  much  struggle  to 
do  so,  unless  one  is  going  into  the  writing  of  History 
on  his  own  account.  Exception  ought  perhaps  to  be 
made  in  favor  of  Matthew  Paris,  who  was  a  monk  of 

*  Orderic  Vitalis,  b.  1075  ;  d.  1150.  Of  Abbey  of  St. 
Evroult,  in  Normandy.  An  edition  of  bis  Ecclesiastical  His- 
tory of  England  and  Normandy  was  published  in  1826,  with 
notice  of  writer,  by  GuizOT. 

f  William  of  Malmsbury  :  dates  uncertain  ;  his  record 
terminates  with  year  1143. 

X  Matthew  Paris,  1200-1259,  a  monk  of  St.  Albans.  His 
Historici  Major  extends  from  1235  to  1259. 

t^  William  of  Newburgh,  b.  113G ;  d.  1208.  New  edi- 
tion of  his  record  {Hisi.  Rerum  Anglicarum),  edited  by  Rich- 
ard HowLET,  published  in  1884. 

II  Roger  de  Hovedex  of  twelfth  century,  (date  uncer. 
tain.)     His  annals  first  published  in  1595. 


EARLY  NORMAN  KINGS.  47 

St.  Albans,  wlio  won  his  name  from  studying  at  Paris 
(as  many  live  students  of  that  day  did),  who  put  a 
brave  and  vehement  Saxonism  of  thought  into  his 
Latin  speech — who  had  art  enough  to  illustrate  his 
own  Chronicle  with  his  pencil,  and  honesty  enough 
to  steer  by  God's  rule  only  and  not  by  the  King's. 
One  should  remember,  too,  that  this  was  about  the 
period  of  the  best  Provencal  balladry  (in  which 
Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  was  proficient); — that  strain 
of  mediaeval  music  and  love  regaling  the  Crusader 
knights  on  their  marches  toward  Judea,  and  that 
strain  of  music  and  love  waking  delightful  echoes 
against  Norman  castle-walls  on  their  return.  Again, 
one  should  keep  note  of  the  year  when  Magna 
(Jliarta  was  granted  by  King  John  (1215),  and  re- 
member, furthermore,  that  within  ten  years  of  the 
same  date  (1205)  Layamon  probably  put  the  finish- 
ing touches  to  his  Brut,  and  the  Arthurian  stories  I 
was  but  now  speaking  of. 

Throughout  these  times  —  we  wiU  say  the  twelfth 
century  and  early  in  the  thirteenth, — England  was 
waxing  every  day  stronger,  though  it  grew  strong 
in  a  rough  and  bloody  way ;  the  great  Norman 
castles  were  a-building  up  and  down  the  land  — 


48  LANDS,  LETTERS,  £-=  RINGS. 

such  as  Conway  and  Rochester  and  Cardiff  and 
Kenilworth  :  the  older  cathedrals,  too,  such  as  Dur- 
ham and  Winchester  and  Canterbury  and  Ely  were 
then  piling  column  by  column  and  vault  bj^  vault 
toward  the  grand  proportions  which  amaze  us  tc 
day.  It  was  the  time  of  growing  trade  too  :  ships 
from  Genoa  and  Venice  lay  off  the  Thames  banks, 
and  had  brought  thither  cargoes  of  silks  and  glass, 
jewels,  Milanese  armor,  and  spices.  Cloth-makers 
came  over  from  Flanders  and  made  settlements  in 
England. 

Perhaps  you  have  read  Scott's  story  of  the  "  Be- 
trothed." If  so,  you  will  remember  his  description 
of  just  such  a  Flemish  settlement  in  its  earlier  chap- 
ters, with  its  Wilkin  Flammock  and  its  charming 
Rose.  The  scene  is  laid  in  the  time  of  Henry  11., 
that  sturdy  King,  who  had  such  woful  trouble  with 
his  wild  sons,  Richard  and  John,  and  still  larger 
trouble  with  Thomas  a  Becket,  (known  now,  as  Harold 
is  known,  by  Tennyson's  tender  music)  who  came  to 
his  death  at  last  by  the  King's  connivance,  under  the 
arches  of  Canterbury  Cathedral ;  and  so  made  that 
shrine  sacred  for  pilgrims,  whether  they  came  from 
the  "Tabard  Inn,"  or  otherwheres. 


» 
EARL  Y  NORMAN  KINGS.  49 

That  story  of  the  "Betrothed"  puts  in  presence 
winningly,  the  threefold  elements  of  English  pop- 
ulation in  that  day  —  the  Britons,  the  Saxons,  and 
the  Normans.     The  Britons  are  pictured  by  a  scene 
of  revel  in  the  great  rambling  palace  of  a  Welsh 
King,   where  the  bai-d  Cadwallon   sings,   and  that 
other  bard,  Caradoc  —  both  historic  characters  ;  and 
it  is  upon  a  legend  in  the  chronicle  of  the  latter, 
Southey  has  based  his  poem  of  "Madoc."    The  Nor- 
mans are  represented,  in  the  same  romance,  by  the 
men-at-arms,  or  knights  of  the  Castle  of  La  Garde 
Doloureuse,  and  the  Saxons  by  the  fierce  old  lady  in 
the  religious  house  of  Baldringham,  v/here  Eveline 
the  heroine,  had  such  fearful  experiences  with  hob- 
goblins over  night.     There  may  be  lapses  in  the 
archaeology  —  as  where  Scott  puts  a  hewn  fireplace 
upon  the  wall  of  the  dining-room  of  the  Lady  Er- 
mengarde  —  antiquarians  being  pretty  well  agreed 
that  chimneys  of  such  class  were  unknown  up  to  the 
fourteenth   century ;   but   still   the    atmosphere   of 
twelfth-century  life  in  England  is  better  given  than 
in  most  of  our  histories.* 

*  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  Scott's  portraitures  may  te 
taken  as  arcliseologic  data,  or  that  one  in  search  of  the  last 
4 


50  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KINGS. 


Richard  Comr  de  Lion. 

In  the  same  connection  and  with  same  commen- 
dation, may  be  named  those  other  romances,  "  The 
Talisman"  and  "Ivanhoe,"  both  relating  to  epochs 
in  the  life  of  King  Eichard  I.  I  suppose  that  of  all 
English  peojDle,  who  have  any  figure  in  their  minds 
of  Eichard  Coeur  de  Lion,  his  bearing  and  charac- 
ter, four-fifths  will  have  derived  the  larger  part  of 
their  impressions  from  these  two  books  of  Scott.  It 
is  a  painting  by  a  friendly  hand  :  Scott  loved  kings  ; 
and  he  loved  the  trace  of  Saxonism  that  was  in 
Eichard's  blood  ;  he  loved  his  bravery,  as  every  Eng- 
Hshman  always  had  and  should.  Is  it  quite  needful 
that  the  friendly  painter  should  put  in  all  the 
bad  birth-marks,  or  the  bristling  red  beard  ?  M. 
Taine  scores  him  savagely,  and  would  have  him  a 


and  minutest  truths  respecting  our  Welsh  or  Saxon  progeni- 
tors should  not  go  to  more  recondite  sources  ;  meantime  you 
will  get  very  much  from  the  reading  of  Scott  to  aid  you  in 
forming  an  image  of  those  times  ;  and,  what  is  better  still, 
you  will  very  likely  carry  from  the  Romancer's  glowing 
pages  a  sharpened  appetite  for  the  more  careful  but  duller 
work  of  the  historians  proper. 


RICHARD    CCEUR   DE  LION.  51 

beast :  and  Thackeray,  iu  liis  little  story  of  Re- 
becca  and  Rowena,  uses  a  good  deal  of  blood  in  the 
coloring. 

No  doubt  he  was  cruel :  but  those  were  days  of 
cruelty  and  of  cruel  kings.  At  least  he  was  openly 
cruel :  he  carried  his  big  battle-axe  in  plain  sight, 
and  if  he  met  a  foe  thwacked  him  on  the  head 
with  it,  and  there  was  an  end.  But  he  did  not  kill 
men  on  the  sly  like  his  brother  King  John,  nor  did 
he  poison  men  by  inches  in  low  dungeons,  as  did 
so  manj^  of  the  polite  and  courteous  Louis'  of 
France. 

As  people  say  now  —  in  a  good  Saxon  way  —  you 
knew  where  to  find  him.  He  was  above-board,  and 
showed  those  traits  of  boldness  and  frankness  which 
almost  make  one  forgive  his  cruelties.  He  was  a 
rough  burr ;  and  I  daresay  wij)ed  his  beard  upon 
the  sleeve  of  his  doublet,  besides  killing  a  great 
many  people  he  should  not  have  killed,  at  Ascalon. 
At  any  rate,  we  shall  not  set  to  work  here  to  gainsay 
or  discredit  those  charming  historic  pictures  of  Scott. 
We  shall  keep  on  going  to  the  pleasant  tournament- 
ground  at  Ashby-de-la-Zouche  every  time  the  fanfare 
of  those  trumpets  breaks  the  silence  of  a  leisure 


52  LAXDS,  LETTERS,  &^  AT/NGS. 

day  ;  and  so  will  our  cliildren  ;  and  so,  I  think,  will 
our  children's  children.  We  shall  keej)  on  listening 
to  Wamba's  jokes,  and  keep  on  loving  Rebecca,  and 
keep  on  —  not  thinking  much  of  the  airy  Rowena, 
and  keej)  on  throwing  our  caps  in  the  air  whenever 
the  big  knight  in  black  armor,  who  is  Richard 
of  England,  rides  in  ujDon  the  course  —  whatever 
all  the  Frenchmen  in  the  world  may  say  about 
him. 

This  Coeur  de  Lion  appears  too  in  the  "Talis- 
man "  —  one  of  Scott's  tales  of  the  crusaders :  and 
here  we  see  him  set  oflf  against  other  monarchs  of 
Europe  ;  as  we  find  England,  also,  set  off  against  the 
other  kingdoms.  The  King  came  home,  you  will  re- 
member, by  the  way  of  Austria,  and  was  caught  and 
caged  there  many  months  —  for  a  time  none  of  his 
people  knowing  where  he  was :  this  is  good  romance 
and  history  too.  A  tradition,  which  probably  has  a 
little  of  both,  says  his  prison  was  discovered  by 
a  brother  minstrel,  who  wandered  under  castle- 
walls  in  search  of  him,  and  sang  staves  of  old  Pro- 
ven9al  songs  that  were  favorites  of  the  King's.  Fin- 
ally Richai'd  responded  from  the  depths  of  his 
dungeon.     Howsoever  this  be,  he  was  found,  ran- 


TIMES  OF  KING    JOHX.  53 

somed,  and  came  home  — to  the  great  grief  of  liis 
brother  John ;  all  which  appears  in  the  story  of 
Ivanhoe,  and  in  the  chronicles  of  the  time — based 
upon  the  reports  of  the  King's  chaplain,  Auselm. 

Times  of  King  John. 

King  John  —  a  base  fellow  every  way — has  a  date 
made  for  him  by  the  grant  of  Magna  Charta,  a.d. 
1215,  of  which  I  have  already  sj)oken,  and  of  its 
near  coincidence  with  the  writing  of  the  Brut  of 
Layamon,  His  name  and  memory  also  cling  to 
mind  in  connection  with  two  other  events  which 
have  their  literary  associations. 

First,  this  scoundrelly  King  could  only  keep 
power  by  making  away  with  his  little  nephew 
Arthur,  and  out  of  this  tragedy  Shakespeare  has 
woven  his  play  of  John — not  very  much  read  per- 
haps, and  rarely  acted  ;  but  in  the  old,  school 
reader-books  of  my  time  there  used  to  be  ex- 
cerpted a  passage  —  a  whole  scene,  in  fact — repre- 
senting the  inten'iew  between  Arthur  and  his  gaoler 
Hubert,  who  is  to  put  out  the  poor  boy's  eyes.  I 
quote  a  fragment : — 


54  LAXDS,  LETTERS,  £-  KINGS. 

Arthur— Mwst    you    with    irons    burn    out    both  mine 

eyes  ? 
Hvhert  —  Young  boy,  I  must. 
Arthur  —  And  will  you  ? 
Hubert  —  And  I  will. 

Arthur —  Y{ai\Q    you   the    heart  ?    When   your    head  did 
but  ache, 
I  knit  my  handkerchief  about  your  brows. 

And  again,  when  the  ruffians  come  in  with  the  irons, 
Hubert  says  — 

"  Give  me  the  irons,  I  say,  and  bind  him  here." 

Arthur  —  Alas,  what  need  you  be  so  boisterous  rough  ? 
I  will  not  struggle  ;  I  will  stand  stone  still  ; 
For  Heaven's  sake,  Hubert,  let  me  not  be  bound. 

I  don't  know  how  young  people  are  made  up 
now-a-days  ;  but  in  the  old  times  this  used  to  touch 
us  and  almost  set  us  upon  the  "  weej) "  and  make 
us  rank  King  John  with  Beelzebub  and — the 
School-master. 

Second  :  In  King  John's  day  Normandy  was  lost 
to  England  —  the  loss  growing  largely,  in  fact,  out 
of  the  cruelty  just  named,  and  its  ensuing  wars. 
Losing  Noi-mandy  had  a  vast  influence  upon  the 
growing  speech  of  England.  Hitherto  the  cherished 
mother-land  had  been  across  the  channel.     Sons  of 


TIMES   OF  Kh\G    JOHN.  55 

the  well-born  had  been  sent  over  to  learn  French 
on  French  ground :  young  ladies  of  fashion  or- 
dered, without  doubt,  their  best  cloaks  and  hats 
from  Kouen  :  the  English  ways  of  talk  might  do 
for  the  churls  and  low-boni :  but  it  Avas  discredited 
by  the  more  cultivated  —  above  all  by  those  who 
made  pursuit  of  the  gayeties  and  elegancies  of  life. 
The  priest  fi-aternity  and  the  universities  of  course 
kept  largely  by  Latin  ;  and  the  old  British  speech 
only  lived  in  the  mountains  and  in  the  ratthng  war- 
songs  of  the  Welsh  bards. .  But  when  Norman  nobles 
and  knights  found  themselves  cut  off  from  their  old 
home  associations  A^dth  Normandy,  and  brought  into 
more  intimate  I'elations  with  the  best  of  the  Eng- 
lish population,  there  grew  up  a  new  pride  in  the 
land  and  language  of  their  adoption.  Hence  there 
comes  about  a  gradual  weaning  from  France.  Lon- 
don begins  to  count  for  more  than  Rou.en.  The 
Norman  knights  and  barons  very  likely  season 
their  talk  with  what  they  may  have  called  English 
slang  ;  and  the  better  taught  of  the  islanders  —  the 
sous  of  country  franklins  affected  more  knowledge 
of  the  Norman  tongue,  and  came  to  know  the 
French   romances,   which   minstrels   sang   at   their 


56  LA. YDS.  LETTERS,  £-  KINGS. 

doors.  So  it  was  that  slowly,  and  with  results  only 
observable  after  long  lapse  of  years,  the  nation  and 
language  became  compacted  into  one  ;  and  the  new 
English  began  to  be  taught  in  the  schools. 


Mixed  Language. 

Of  the  transition  stage,  as  it  was  called,  there 
are  narrative  poems  of  record,  which  were  wi-itten 
with  a  couplet  in  Norman  French,  and  then  a  coup- 
let in  English.  There  were  medleys,  too,  of  these 
times,  in  which  the  friars  mingled  the  thi-ee  tongues 
of  Latin,  French,  and  English.*  Blood  mingled  as 
languages  mingled  ;  and  by  the  middle  of  the  four- 
teenth century  a  man  was  no  longer  foreign  because 
he  was  of  Norman  descent,  and  no  longer  vulgar 
because  he  was  of  Saxon. 

To  this  transition  time  —  in  Henry  in.'s  day  (who 

*  I  give  fragment  of  one,  of  the  reign  of  Edward  II.,  cited 
by  Mr.  Marsh  :  p.  247,  English  Language  and  Early  Liter' 
ature. 

"  Quant  honme  deit  parleir,  videat  qua  verba  loquatur  ; 
Sen  covent  aver,  ne  stnltior  inveniatur, 
Qtiando  quis  loquitur,  bote  resoun  reste  thervnne 
Derisum  patitur,  ant  lutel  so  slial  he  wynne,  '  etc. 


MIXED  LANGUAGE,  57 

had  a  long  reign  of  fifty-six  years  —  chiefly  memor- 
able for  its  length),  there  appeared  the  rhyming 
Chronicle  of  Robert  of  Gloucester  ;  *  —  Avhat  we 
should  caU  a  doggerel  story  of  England  from  fabu- 
lous times  down,  and  worthy  of  mention  as  the  first 
serious  attempt  at  an  English-written  histoiy  — 
others  noticed  already  being  either  merely  bald 
chronicles,  or  in  scholastic  Latin,  or  in  French  met- 
ric form.  I  give  you  a  little  taste  of  his  wooden 
verse  — 

Lyiicolne  [has]  fairest  men, 

Grantebrugge,  and  Hontyndon  most  plente  6  deep  fen, 
Ely  of  fairest  place,  of  fairest  site  Rochester, 
Even  agen  Fraunce  stonde  ye  countre  6  Chichester, 
Norwiche  agen  Denemark,  Chestre  agen  Irelond, 
Duram  agen  Norwei,  as  ich  understonde. 

Yet  he  tells  us  some  things  worth  knowing  — 
about  every-day  matters  —  about  the  fish  and  the 
fi-uits  and  the  pastures,  and  the  things  he  saw  mth 
his  own  eyes.     And  we  learn  from  these  old  chron- 

*  Robert  of  Gloucester  lived  in  the  latter  part  of  the  thir- 
teenth century,  perhaps  surviving  into  the  fourteenth.  In 
addition  to  his  Chronide  of  England,  he  is  thought  to  have 
Nvritten  Lives  and  Legends  of  the  Englmh  SainU. 


58  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &»  KINGS. 

iclers  bow  much  better  a  stoiy  a  mau  can  make,  and 
bow  mucb  more  wortb  it  is  —  in  telling  of  tbe  tbings 
be  bas  really  seen,  tban  of  tbe  tbings  be  bas  not 
seen.  Most  of  tbese  old  writing  people  must  needs 
begin  at  tbe  beginning  —  drawling  over  tbe  ancient 
fables  about  tbe  Creation  and  Siege  of  Troy,  keep- 
ing by  tbe  conventional  untrutbs,  and  so  —  very 
barren  and  good  for  notbing,  until  tbey  get  upon 
tbeir  own  days,  wben  tbey  grow  ricb  and  meaty  and 
juicy,  in  spite  of  tbemselves,  and  by  reason  of  tbeir 
voluble  minuteness,  and  tbeir  mention  of  bomely, 
every-day  unimportant  tbings.  Tbey  cannot  tell 
lies,  witbout  fear  of  detection,  on  tbeir  own  ground : 
and  so  tbey  get  tbat  darlingest  quality  of  all  bis- 
tory  —  tbe  simple  tiiilb. 

But  if  a  man  wanders  otberwberes  and  makes  re- 
port, be  may  tell  lies,  and  tbe  lies  may  amuse  and 
get  bim  fame.  Tbus  it  bappened  witb  anotber 
well-known  but  somewbat  apocrypbal  writer  of  tbis 
Transition  Englisb  epocb ;  I  mean  Sir  Jobn  Man- 
deville,  wbose  book  of  travels  into  distant  countries 
bad  a  very  great  run. 


SIR    JOHN  MANDEVILLE.  59 

Sir  John  Mandeville. 

We  know  little  of  Mandeville  except  what  he  tells 
us  ;  —  that  he  was  born  at  St.  Albans  —  twenty 
miles  from  London,  a  place  famous  for  its  great 
abbey  and  its  Roman  remains  —  in  the  year  1300  : 
—  that  he  studied  to  be  a  mediciner  —  then  set 
off  (1322)  on  his  travels  into  Egypt,  Tartary,  China, 
and  Persia  —  countries  visited  by  that  more  famous 
Venetian  traveller,  Marco  Polo,*  a  half  centurj^  ear- 
lier ;  —  also,  at  other  dates  by  certain  wandering 
Italian  Friars  f  of  less  fame.  From  some  of  these 
earlier  travellers  it  is  now  made  certain  that  Sir 
John  pilfered  veiy  largely ;  —  so  largely,  in  fact,  and 
so  rashly,  that  there  is  reason  to  doubt,  not  only  his 
stories  about  having  been  in  the  service  of  a  Sultan 

*  II  miUone  di  Messer  Marco  Polo,  Venezicmo.  Florence, 
1827.    Marco  Polo  d.  1323. 

f  Odoric,  a  priest  of  Pordeuone  in  Friiili,  who  went  on 
Church  mission  about  1318.  His  narrative  is  to  be  found  in 
the  Bamusio  Col.,  2d  Vol.  1574.  Carpini  (Joannes  de 
Piano),  was  a  Franciscan  from  near  Perugia,  who  travelled 
East  about  1245.  Hakluyt  has  portions  of  his  narrative : 
but  full  text  is  only  in  Recueil  de  Voyages,  Vol.  IV.,  by 
M.  D'Avezac. 


6o  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  A'LVGS. 

of  Egypt  or  of  the  Khan  of  Kathay  —  as  lie  avers  -- 
but  also  to  doubt  if  he  visited  at  all  the  far-away 
countries  which  he  pretends  to  describe. 

Nay,  so  dejflowered  is  he  of  his  honors  in  these 
latter  days,  that  recent  critics  *  are  inclined  to  ques- 
tion his  right  to  the  title  of  Sir  John,  and  to  deny 
wholly  his  authorship  of  that  English  version  of  the 
tales  of  travel,  which  have  been  so  long  and  pleas- 
antly associated  with  his  name. 

This  seems  rather  hard  measure  to  mete  out  to 
the  garrulous  old  voyager  ;  nor  does  the  evidence 
against  his  having  Englished  his  own  Romance  stories, 
appear  fully  conclusive.  What  we  may  count  for 
certain  about  the  matter  is  this  :  —  There  does  exist 
a  very  considerable  budget  of  delightfully  extrava- 
gant travellers'  tales,  bearing  the  Mandeville  name, 
and  wi-itten  in  an  English  which  —  with  some  mend- 
ing of  bygone  words  —  is  charming  now:  and  which 
may  be  called  the  first  fair  and  square  book  of  the 
new  English  prose;  —  meaning  by  that  —  the  first 
book  of  length  and  of  popular  currency  which  in- 
troduced  a   full   measure — perhaps    over -running 

*  Messrs.  Nicholson  and  Yule,  who  are  sponsors  for  the 
elaborate  article  in  the  Br,  Ency. 


SIR    JOHN  MAXDEVILLE.  6i 

measure  —  of  those  words  of  Romance  or  Latin  ori- 
gin, which  afterward  came  to  be  incorporated  in  the 
English  of  the  fifteenth  century.  The  book  has  no 
EngUsh  qualities  —  beyond  its  language ;  and  might 
have  been  written  by  a  Tartai',  who  could  tell  of 
Munchausen  escapes  and  thank  God  in  good  cur- 
rent dialect  of  Britain. 

I  give  a  specimen  from  the  description  of  his  de- 
scent into  the  Valley  Perilous  —  which  he  found  be- 
side the  Isle  of  Mistorak,  nigh  to  the  river  Phison : 

This  Vale  is  all  full  of  devils,  and  hatli  been  always.  And 
men  say  there  that  it  is  one  of  the  entries  of  hell.  In  that 
Vale  is  plenty  of  gold  and  silver  ;  wherefore  many  misbeliev- 
ing men,  and  many  Christians  also,  oftentimes  go  in,  to  have 
of  the  treasure.  .  .  .  And  in  midplace  of  that  Vale  is  an 
head  of  the  visage  of  a  devil  bodily  —  full  horrible  and  dread- 
ful to  see.  But  there  is  no  man  in  the  world  so  hardy.  Chris- 
tian man,  ne  other,  but  that  he  would  be  drad  [afraid]  for 
to  behold  it.  For  he  beholdeth  every  man  so  sharply  with 
dreadful  eyen  that  ben  evermore  moving  and  sparkling  as 
fire,  and  changeth  and  steereth  so  often  in  divers  manner, 
with  so  horrible  countenance,  that  no  man  dare  not  nighen 
toward  him. 

The  author  says  fourteen  of  his  party  went  in,  and 
when  they  came  out  —  only  nine  :  "  And  we  wisten 
never,  whether  that  our  fellows  were  lost  or  elles 


62  LAXDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

turned  again  for  dread.  But  we  never  saw  them 
never  after."  He  says  there  were  plenty  of  jewels 
and  precious  stones  thereabout,  but  "I  touched 
none,  because  that  the  Devils  be  so  subtle  to  make 
a  thing  to  seem  otherwise  than  it  is,  for  to  deceive 
mankind."  He  tells  us  also  of  the  giants  Gog  and 
MasfOfj,  and  of  a  wonderful  bird  —  like  the  roc  of 
Ai'abian  Nights'  fable  —  that  would  carry  off  an  ele- 
phant in  its  talons,  and  he  closes  all  his  stupendous 
narratives  with  thanks  to  God  Almighty  for  his  mar- 
vellous escapes. 

I  have  spoken  of  its  popularity,  HaUiwell  —  who 
edits  the  London  edition  of  1839  —  says  that  of  no 
book,  with  the  exception  of  Scriptures,  are  there  so 
many  MSS.  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries 
existing ;  showing  that  for  two  centuries  its  fables 
were  either  not  exploded,  or  at  least  lost  not  their 
relish. 

Early  BooJi-mah'ing. 

And  now  what  do  we  mean  by  books  and  by 
popularity  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century? 
The  reader  must  keep  in  mind  that  our  notion  of 
popularity  measured  by  thousands  of  copies  would 


EARLY  BOOK-MAKING.  63 

then  have  been  regarded  as  strange  as  the  most 
monstrous  of  Sir  John  Mandeville's  stories.  There 
was  no  printing;  there  was  no  paper,  either  —  an 
we  understand.  The  art,  indeed,  of  making  paper 
out  of  pulp  did  exist  at  this  date  with  the  Oriental 
nations  —  perhaps  with  the  Moors  in  Spain,  but  not 
in  England.  Parchment  made  from  skins  was  the 
main  material,  and  books  were  engrossed  laboredly 
with  a  pen  or  stylus.  It  was  most  likely  a  verj'  pop- 
ular book  which  came  to  an  edition  of  fifty  or  sixty 
copies  within  five  years  of  its  first  appearance  :  and 
a  good  manuscript  was  so  expensive  an  affair  that 
its  purchase  was  often  made  a  matter  to  be  testi- 
fied to  by  subscribing  witnesses,  as  we  witness  the 
transfer  of  a  house.  A  little  budget  of  these  manu- 
scripts made  a  valuable  hbrary.  When  St.  Augus- 
tine planted  his  Chiu'ch  in  Kent  —  he  brought  nine 
volumes  with  him  as  his  literary  treasure. 

Lanfranc,  who  was  one  of  the  Norman  abbots 
brought  over  by  the  Conqueror  to  build  up  the 
priesthood  in  learning,  made  order  in  1072  that  at 
Lent  the  librarian  should  deliver  to  the  worthiest  of 
the  brotherhood  each  a  book  ;  and  these  were  to 
have  a  year  to  read  them.     At  the  commencement  of 


64  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KLNGS. 

the  fourteenth  ceutuiy  there  were  only  four  classics 
in  the  royal  library  of  Paris  ;  and  at  the  same  date 
the  library  of  Oxford  University  consisted  of  a  few 
tracts  kept  in  chests  under  St.  Mary's  Chiu'ch.  — 
Green,  in  his  "Making  of  England,"*  cites  from 
Alcuin  a  bit  of  that  old  Churchman's  Latin  poem  — 
"  De  Pontificibus"  —  which  he  says  is  worthy  of  sjje- 
cial  note,  as  the  first  catalogue  which  we  have  of 
any  English  Library. 

"  Quidquid  Gregorius  snmmiis  docet,  et  Leo  Papa  ; 
Basilins  quidquid,  Fulgentius  atque,  coruscant, 
Cassiodorus  item,  Chrysostomus  atqxie  Johannes 
Quidquid  et  Athelmus  docuit,  quid  Beda  magister." 

Beda  and  Aldhelm  are  the  only  English  writers 
represented  ;  and  the  catalogue  —  if  we  call  it  such 
—  could  be  written  on  a  half-page  of  note  paper  — 
Metaphors  and  Geography  and  Theology  and  dec- 
orative epithets  included. 

Thus  in  these  times  a  book  was  a  book  :  some  of 
them  cost  large  sums ;  the  mere  transcription  into 
plain  black-letter  or  Old  Enghsh  was  toilsome  and 
involved  weeks  and  months  of  labor  ;  and  when  it 


*  Page  407,  chap.  viii. 


EARLY  BOOK-MAKIXG.  65 

came  to  illuminated  borders,  or  initials  and  title- 
pages  with  decorative  paintings,  the  labor  involved 
was  enormous.  There  were  collectors  in  those  days 
as  now  —  M'ho  took  royal  freaks  for  gorgeous  mis- 
sals ;  and  monkish  lives  were  spent  in  gratifying  the 
whims  of  such  collectors.  In  the  year  1237  (Henry 
in.)  there  is  entry  in  the  Eevenue  Roll  of  the  costs 
of  silver  clasps  and  studs  for  the  King's  great  hook 
of  Romances.  Upon  the  continent,  in  Italy,  where 
an  art  atmosphere  prevailed  that  was  more  enkin- 
dhng  than  under  the  fogs  of  this  savage  England, 
such  work  became  thoroughly  artistic ;  and  even 
now  beautiful  motifs  for  decoration  on  the  walls  of 
New  York  houses  are  sought  from  old  French  or 
Latin  manuscripts  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centiu'ies. 

And  where  was  this  work  of  making  books  done  5 
There  were  no  book-shops  or  publishers'  houses, 
but  in  place  of  them  abbeys  or  monasteries  — - 
each  having  its  scriptorium  or  writing-room,  where, 
under  the  vaulted  Norman,  arches  and  by  the  dim 
light  of  their  loop-holes  of  windows,  the  work  of 
transcription  went  on  month  after  month  and  year 

after  year.   Thus  it  is  recorded  that  in  that  old  mon- 
5 


66  LANDS,  LETTERS,  £-  KINGS. 

astery  of  St.  Albans  (of  whicli  we  just  now  spoke) 
eighty  distinct  works  were  transcribed  during  tbe 
reign  of  Henry  VI. ;  it  is  mentioned  as  swift  work  ; 
and  as  Henry  reigned  thirty-nine  years,  it  counts  up 
about  two  complete  MSS.  a  year.  And  the  atmo- 
sphere of  St.  Albans  was  a  learned  one  ;  this  locality 
not  being  overmuch  given  to  the  roisterings  that 
belonged  to  Bolton  Priory— of  which  you  will  re- 
member the  hint  in  a  pleasant  picture  of  Land- 
seer's. 

Religious  Houses. 

If  you  or  I  had  journeyed  thither  in  that  day  — 
coming  from  what  land  we  might  — I  think  Ave 
should  have  been  earnest  among  tlie  first  things, 
to  see  those  great  monasteries  that  lay  scattered 
over  the  surface  of  England  and  of  Southern  Scot- 
land ;  —  not  perched  on  hills  or  other  defensible 
positions  like  the  Norman  castles  of  the  robber 
Barons  —  not  buried  in  cities  like  London  Tower, 
or  the  great  halls  which  belonged  to  guilds  of  mer- 
chants —  but  planted  in  the  greenest  and  loveliest 
of  valleys,  where  rivers  full  of  fish  rij^j^led  within 
hearing,    and   woods    full   of    game    clothed   every 


RELIGIOUS  HOUSES.  67 

headland  that  looked  upon  the  valley  ;  where  the 
fields  were  the  richest  —  where  the  water  was  purest 
■ —  where  the  sun  smote  warmest ;  there  these  relig- 
ious houses  grew  u]d,  stone  by  stone,  cloister  by 
cloister,  chapel  by  chapel,  manor  by  manor,  until 
there  was  almost  a  township,  with  outlying  cottages 
—  and  some  great  dominating  abbey  church  —  rich 
in  all  the  choicest  architecture  of  the  later  Norman 
days — Ufting  its  spire  from  among  the  clustered 
buildings  scarce  less  lovely  than  itself. 

Not  only  had  learning  and  book-making  been 
kept  alive  in  these  great  religious  houses,  but  the 
art  of  Agriculture.  Within  their  walled  courts  were 
grown  all  manner  of  fruits  and  vegetables  known  to 
their  climate  ;  these  monks  knew  and  followed  the 
best  rulings  of  Cato,  and  Crescenzius  (who  just 
now  has  written  on  this  subject  in  Northern  Italy, 
and  is  heard  of  by  way  of  Padua),  They  make  sour 
wine  out  of  graj^es  grown  against  sunny  walls  :  they 
have  abundant  flocks  too  —  driven  out  each  morn- 
ing from  their  sheltering  courts,  and  retui-ned  each 
night ;  and  they  have  great  breadth  of  ground  un- 
der caref ullest  tillage. 

Of  such  character  was  Tintern  Abbey  —  in  the 


68  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

valley  of  the  Wye  —  now  perhaps  the  most  charm- 
ing of  all  English  ruins.  Such  another  was  Netley 
Abbey,  on  Southampton  water,  and  Bolton  Priory, 
close  by  that  famous  stream,  the  Wharfe,  which  you 
will  remember  in  Wordsworth's  story  of  the  "White 
Doe  of  Rylstone."  Fountain's  Abbey,  in  Yorkshire, 
was  yet  another,  from  whose  ruin  we  can  stud}'' 
better  perhaps  than  from  any  other  in  England, 
the  extent  and  disposition  of  these  old  religious 
houses.  Melrose  was  another ;  and  so  was  Dry- 
burgh,  where  Scott's  body  lies,  and  Abingdon,  close 
upon  Oxford  —  where  was  attached  that  Manor  of 
Cumnor,  which  Scott  assigns  for  a  prison  to  the 
sad-fated  Amy  Robsart,  in  the  tale  of  "Kenilworth." 
Glastonbury  was  another  :  this  too  (once  encircled 
by  the  arms  of  the  river  Brue),  was  the  "  Isle  of  Av- 
alon  "  in  Arthurian  romance  ; 

"  Wliere  falls  not  hail,  or  rain  or  any  snow, 
Nor  ever  wind  blows  loudly." 

Here  (at  Glastonbury)  is  still  in  existence  the  abbot's 
barn  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  here,  too,  a  mag- 
nificent abbot's  kitchen  —  thirty-three  feet  square 
and  seventy-two  feet  high  :  Think  what  the  cooking 


RELIGIOUS  HOUSES.  69 

and  the  meats  must  have  been  in  a  kitchen  of  that 
style  ! 

Now,  these  shrewd  people  who  lived  in  these 
great  monasteries,  and  built  them,  and  enjoyed  the 
good  things  kept  in  store  there  —  made  friends  of 
the  vassals  about  them  ;  they  were  generous  with 
their  pot-herbs  and  fruits  ;  they  were  the  medicine- 
men of  the  neighborhood  ;  they  doled  out  flasks  of 
wine  to  the  sick  ;  they  gave  sanctuary  and  aid  to 
the  Robin  Hoods  and  Little  Johns  ;  and  Eobin 
Hood's  men  kept  them  in  supply  of  venison  ;  they 
enlivened  their  courts  with  minstrelsy.  Warton  says 
that  at  the  feast  of  the  installation  of  Ralph,  Abbot 
of  St.  Augustine's,  Canterbury,  in  1309,  seventy  shil- 
lings was  expended  for  minstrels  in  the  gallery,  and 
six  thousand  guests  were  present  in  and  about  the 
halls.  Many  abbeys  maintained  minstrels  or  harp- 
ers of  their  own  ;  and  we  may  be  sure  that  the 
monks  had  jolly  as  well  as  religious  ditties. 

They  made  friends  of  all  strong  and  influential 
people  near  them  ;  their  revenues  were  enormous. 
They  established  themselves  by  all  the  arts  of  con- 
ciliation. Finding  among  their  young  vassals  one 
keener  and  sharper  witted  than  his  fellows,  they  be 


70  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

guiled  him  into  the  abbey  —  instructed  him  —  per* 
hajDs  made  a  clerk  of  him,  for  the  transcription  of 
the  MSS.  we  have  spoken  of  (it  was  thus  Caedmon 
was  brought  into  notice) ;  if  very  promising,  he 
might  come  to  place  of  dignity  among  the  monks  — 
possibly  grow,  as  Thomas  a  Becket  did,  from  such 
humble  beginnings  to  an  archbishopric  and  to  the 
mastership  of  the  religious  heart  of  England. 

These  houses  were  the  fat  corporations  of  that 
day,  with  their  lobby-men  and  spokesmen  in  all 
state  assemblages.  Their  representatives  could  wear 
hair  shirts,  or  purple  robes  and  golden  miti'es,  as 
best  suited  the  needs  of  the  occasion.  They  could 
boast  that  their  institutions  were  established  —  like 
our  railway's  —  for  the  good  of  the  people,  and  in 
the  interests  of  humanity  ;  but  while  rendering  ser- 
vice, waxing  into  such  lustiness  of  strength  and  such 
habits  of  corruj)tion  and  rapacity,  that  at  last,  when 
fully  bloated,  they  were  broken  open  and  their 
riches  drifted  away  under  the  whirlwind  of  the 
wrath  of  King  Henrj'  "VIII.  Great  schemes  of  greed 
are  very  apt  to  carry  an  avenging  Henry  VIII.  some- 
where in  their  trail.  But  let  us  not  forget  that  there 
was  a  time  in  the  early  centuries  of  Christian  Eng- 


RELIGIOUS  HOUSES.  71 

land  when  these  great  reHgious  houses  —  whose 
ruins  appeal  to  us  from  their  lovely  solitudes  — 
were  the  guardians  of  learning,  the  nurses  of  all 
new  explorations  into  the  ways  of  knowledge,  the 
expounders  of  all  healing  arts,  and  the  promoters  of 
all  charities  and  all  neighborly  kiudhness.*  What- 
ever young  fellow  of  that  day  did  not  plant  himself 
under  shadow  of  one  of  these  religious  houses 
for  growth,  or  did  not  study  in  the  schools  of 
Oxford  or  Cambridge,  must  needs  have  made  his 
way  into  favor  and  fame  and  society  with  a  lance 


*  An  abbot  presided  over  monasteries  —  sometimes  inde- 
pendent of  the  bishop  —  sometimes  (in  a  degree)  subject. 
Priors  also  had  presidence  over  some  religious  houses  —  but 
theirs  was  usually  a  delegated  authority.  An  aesthetic  abbot 
or  prior  was  always  building  —  or  always  getting  new  colors 
for  the  missal  work  in  tlie  sci'iptonuvi :  hunting  abbots  were 
thinking  more  of  the  refectory.  At  least  six  religious  ser- 
vices were  held  a  day,  and  always  midnight  mass.  It  was 
easy,  but  not  wholly  a  life  of  idleness.  A  bell  summoned  to 
breakfast,  and  bells  to  mass.  Of  a  sunny  day  —monks  were 
teaching  boys  one  side  of  the  cloister — artistic  monks  work- 
ing at  their  missals  the  other  ;  perhaps  under  such  prior  as 
he  of  Jorcaulx  (Scott's  Ivanhoe)  some  young  monk  would 
be  training  his  hawks  or  dogs.  An  interesting  abstract  of  the 
Rule  of  the  Benedictines  may  be  found  under  Monachism, 
Br.  Eiicy.,  Vol.  xvi. 


72  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

and  good  horse  —  just  as  young  fellows  do  it  now 
with  an  oar  or  a  racket. 


Life  of  a  Damoiselle. 

But  what  shall  be  said  of  a  young  person  of  the 
other  sex  of  like  age  and  tastes  —  to  whose  ambi- 
tions war  and  knight-errantry  and  the  university 
cloisters  are  not  open  ?  Whither  should  the  daugh- 
ters of  the  great  houses  go,  or  how  fill  up  the  cur- 
rent of  their  young  lives  in  that  old  thirteenth-cen- 
tury England  ? 

It  is  true,  there  are  religious  houses  —  nunneries 
—  priories  —  for  these,  too,  with  noble  and  saintly 
j)rioresses,  such  as  St.  Hilda's,  St.  Agatha's,  St.  Mar- 
garet's ;  all  these  bountiful  in  their  charities,  strict 
for  most  part  in  their  discipline.  To  these  clois- 
tered schools  may  go  the  cousins,  sisters,  nieces  of 
these  saintly  lady  superiors  ;  here  they  may  learn 
of  music,  of  embroidery,  of  letter -writing,  and 
Christian  carols  —  in  Latin  or  English  or  French, 
as  the  case  may  be.  If  not  an  inmate  of  one 
of  these  quiet  cloisters,  our  young  thirteenth- 
centurv   damsel   will    find    large   advantage   in    its 


LIFE   OF  A   DAMOISELLE.  73 

neigliborhood  ;  in  the  interchange  of  kindly  offices 
—  in  the  loan  of  illuminated  missals,  of  fruits,  of 
flowers,  of  haunches  of  venison,  and  in  the  assur- 
ance that  tenderest  of  nurses  and  consolers  will  be 
at  hand  in  case  of  illness  or  disaster  ;  and  always 
there  —  an  unfailing  sanctuary.  At  home,  within 
the  dingy  towers  of  a  castle  or  squat  Saxon  home- 
stead, with  walls  hung  in  tapestry,  or  made  only 
half  bright  with  the  fire  upon  the  hearthstone  — 
with  slits  of  windows  filled  with  horn  or  translucent 
bits  of  skin  —  there  must  have  been  wearisome  en- 
nui. Yet  even  here  there  were  the  deft  handmaids, 
cheery  and  companionable;  the  games  —  draughts 
of  a  surety  (in  rich  houses  the  checkers  being  of 
jasper  or  rock  crystal)  ;  the  harp,  too,  and  the  fal- 
cons ior  a  hunting  bout  in  fail*  weather  ;  the  little 
garden  within  the  court — with  its  eglantine,  its 
pinks,  its  Hlies  fair.  Possibly  there  may  be  also 
transcripts  of  old  chansons  between  ivory  lids  — 
images  carven  out  of  olive  wood  —  relics  brought  to 
the  castle  by  friendly  knights  from  far-away  Pales- 
tine. And  travelling  merchants  find  their  way  to 
such  homes  —  bringing  glass  beads  from  Venice, 
and  little  dainty  mirrors,  just  now  the  vogue  in  that 


74  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KINGS. 

great  City  by  the  Sea  ;  and  velvet  and  filigree  head, 
dresses,  and  jewels  and  bits  of  tapestry  from  Flem- 
ish cities.  Perhaps  a  minstrel  —  if  the  revenues  of 
the  family  cannot  retain  one  —  will  stroll  up  to  the 
castle-gates  of  an  evening,  giving  foretaste  of  his 
power  by  a  merry  snatch  of  song  about  Robin  Hood, 
or  Sir  Guy,  or  the  Nut  Brown  Maid. 

Some  company  of  priests  with  a  lordly  abbot  at 
their  head,  journeying  up  from  St.  Albans,  may  stop 
for  a  day,  and  kindle  up  with  cheer  the  great  hall, 
which  will  be  fresh  strown  with  aromatic  herbs  for 
the  occasion  ;  and  so  some  solitary  palmer,  with 
scollop  shell,  may  make  the  evening  short  with  his 
story  of  travel  across  the  desert  ;  or  —  best  of  all 
—  some  returning  knight,  long  looked  for  —  half 
doubted  —  shall  talk  bravely  of  the  splendors  he 
has  seen  in  the  luxurious  court  of  Chai'les  of  Anjou, 
where  the  chariot  of  his  Queen  was  covered  with 
velvet  sprinkled  with  hlies  of  gold,  and  men-at-arms 
wore  plumed  helmets  and  jewelled  collars  ;  he  may 
sing,  too,  snatches  of  those  tender  madrigals  of 
Provence,  and  she  —  if  Sister  Nathalie  has  taught 
her  thereto  —  may  join  in  a  roundelay,  and  the  min- 
strel and  harpist  come  clashing  in  to  the  refrain. 


LIFE    OF  A    DAMOISELLE.  75 

Then  there  is  the  home  embroidery  —  the  hem- 
ming of  the  robes,  the  trimming  of  ^he  mantles, 
the  building  up  of  the  head  pieces.  Pray —  in  ^Yhat 
age  and  under  what  civilization  —  has  a  young  wo- 
man ever  failed  of  showing  zeal  in  those  branches 
of  knowledge  ? 

So,  we  will  leave  England  —  to-day  —  upon  the 
stroke  of  thii-teen  hundred  years.  When  we  talk  of 
life  there  again,  we  shall  come  very  swiftly  upon 
traces  of  one  of  her  great  philosophers,  and  of  one 
of  her  gi-eat  reformers,  and  of  one  of  her  greatest 
poets. 


CHAPTER  m. 

IN  oui'  last  chapter  I  spoke  of  that  Geoffrey  of 
Monmoutli  who  about  the  middle  of  the 
twelfth  century  wrote  a  history  —  mostly  apocryphal 
—  in  which  was  imbedded  a  germ  of  the  King  Ai*- 
thm'  fables.  "We  traced  these  fables,  growing  under 
the  successive  touches  of  Wace  and  Map  and  Laya- 
mon  into  full-fledged  legends,  repeated  over  and 
over ;  and  finally,  with  splendid  affluence  of  color 
appearing  on  the  literary  hoi'izon  of  our  own  day. 
I  spoke  of  King  Eichard  I.  and  of  his  song  loving, 
and  of  his  blood  loving,  and  of  his  royal  frankness : 
then  of  John,  that  renegade  brother  of  his  —  of  how 
he  granted  3Iagna  Charla,  killed  poor  Prince  Arthur, 
and  stirred  such  a  current  of  war  as  caused  the  loss 
of  Normandy  to  England.  I  spoke  of  the  connec- 
tion of  this  loss  with  the  consolidation  of  the  lan- 
guage ;  of  how  Robert  of  Gloucester  made  a  rhym- 


ROGER   BACON.  yy 

ing  liistory  that  was  iu  a  new  English  ;  of  how  the 
name  of  Sir  John  Mande-sdlle  was  associated  with 
great  hes,  in  the  same  tongue ;  how  the  rehgious 
houses  made  books,  and  fattened  on  the  best  of  the 
land,  and  grew  corruj^t ;  and  last  —  of  how  we,  if  we 
had  lived  in  those  days,  would  have  found  disport 
for  our  idle  hours  and  consolation  for  our  serious 
ones. 

Roger  Bacon. 

Starting  now  from  about  the  same  point  in  time 
where  we  left  off;  om-  opening  scene  will  take  us  to 
the  old  University  town  of  Oxford.  It  is  a  rare  city 
for  a  young  American  to  ^dsit ;  its  beautiful  High 
Street,  its  quaint  Colleges,  its  Christ  Church  Hall,  its 
libraries,  its  Magdalen  walks  and  tower,  its  charm- 
ing gardens  of  St.  John's  and  Trinity,  its  near  Park 
of  Blenheim,  its  fragrant  memories  —  all,  make  it  a 
place  where  one  would  wish  to  go  and  long  to  lin- 
ger. But  in  the  far-away  time  we  speak  of  it  was  a 
walled  city,  with  narrow  streets,  and  filthy  lodging 
houses  ;  yet  great  parliaments  had  been  held  there  ; 
the  royal  domain  of  Woodstock  was  near  by  with  its 
Palace  ;  the  nunnery  was  standing,  where  was  edu- 


78  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

cated  the  Fair  Rosamund  ;  a  little  farther  away  was 
the  great  religious  house  of  Abingdon  and  the  vil- 
lage of  Curanor  ;  but  of  all  its  present  august  and 
venerable  ari'ay  of  colleges  only  one  or  two  then  ex- 
isted—  Merton,  and  perhaps  Balliol,  or  the  Uni- 
versity.* 

But  the  schools  here  had  won  a  very  great  repu- 
tation in  the  current  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
largely  through  the  scholarship  and  popularity  of 
Grosseteste,  one  while  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  who  held 
ministrations  at  Oxford  by  reason  of  his  connection 
with  a  Franciscan  brotherhood  established  here  ; 
and  among  those  crop-haired  Franciscans  was  a 
monk  —  whom  w^e  have  made  this  visit  to  Oxford  to 
find  —  named  Roger  Bacon.  He  had  been  not  only 
student  but  teacher  there  ;  and  a  few  miles  south 
from  the  King's  Arms  Hotel  in  Broad  Street,  Ox- 
ford, is  still  standing  a  church  tower,  in  the  little 
parish  of  Sunningwell,  from  which  —  as  tradition 
affirms  —  Roger  Bacon  studied  the  heavens  :  for  he 

*  College  Statutes  of  Merton  date  from  1274  ;  those  of 
University  from  1280  ;  and  of  Balliol  from  1282.  Paper  of 
George  C.  Bkoderick,  Nineteenth  Century,  September, 
1883. 


ROGER  BACON.  79 

believed  in  Astrology,  and  believed  too  in  the  trans- 
mutation of  metals ;  and  he  got  the  name  of  magi- 
cian, and  was  cashiered  and  imprisoned  twice  or 
thrice  for  this  and  other  strange  beUefs.  But  he 
believed  most  of  all  in  the  full  utterance  of  his  be- 
liefs, and  in  experimenting,  and  in  interrogating 
nature,  and  distrusting  conventionalisms,  and  in 
search  for  himself  into  all  the  mysteries,  whether  of 
nature  or  theology. 

He  had  sprung  from  worthy  and  well-to-do  jia- 
rents  in  the  Western  County  of  Somersetshii-e,  He 
had  spent  very  much  money  for  those  days  on  his 
education  ;  had  obtained  a  Doctorate  at  Paris ;  his 
acuteness  and  his  capacity  for  study  were  eveiy- 
where  recognized  ;  he  knew  more  of  Greek  than 
most  of  his  teachers,  and  more  of  Hebrew  than  most 
of  the  Rabbis,  and  more  of  Chemistry  and  Physics 
generally  than  probably  any  other  man  in  England. 
He  took  a  Friar's  vows,  as  we  have  said  ;  but  these 
did  not  save  him  from  interdiction  by  the  Chief  of 
his  Order,  by  whom  he  was  placed  under  ten  years 
of  surveillance  at  Paris  —  his  teachings  silenced,  and 
he  suffering  almost  to  starvation.  A  liberal  Pope 
(for  those  days),  Clement  IV.,  by  his  intervention  set 


So  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KLYGS. 

free  the  jiliilosopher's  pen  again  ;  and  there  came  ol 
this  freedom  the  Opus  Majas  by  which  he  is  most 
worthily  known.  Subsequently  he  was  permitted  to 
return  to  his  old  sphere  of  study  in  Oxford,  where 
he  j5ursued  afresh  his  scientific  investigations,  but 
coupled  with  them  such  outspoken  denunciations  of 
the  vices  and  ignorance  of  his  brother  Friars,  as  to 
provoke  new  condemnation  and  an  imprisonment 
that  lasted  for  fourteen  years  —  pajdng  thus,  in 
this  accredited  mediaeval  way,  for  his  freedom  of 
speech. 

It  is  not  improbable  that  we  owe  to  him  and  to 
his  oj^tical  studies  —  in  some  humble  degree  —  the 
eye-glasses  that  make  reading  possible  to  old  eyes  : 
and  his  books,  first  of  any  books  from  English 
sources,  described  how  sulphur  and  charcoal  and 
saltpetre  properly  combined  will  make  thunder  and 
lightning  [sic  fades  lonitrum  et  coruscationem).  We 
call  the  mixture  gunpowder.  In  his  Opus  JIaJus 
(he  wrote  only  in  Latin,  and  vastly  more  than  has 
appeared  in  printed  form)  scholars  find  some  of  the 
seeds  of  the  riper  knowledges  which  came  into 
the  Novum  Organum  of  another  and  later  Bacon 
—  with  whom   we    must  not  confound  this  sharp, 


ROGER   BACON.  81 

eager,  determined,  inquiring  Franciscan  friar.  He 
is  worthy  to  be  kept  in  mind  as  the  Englishman 
who  above  all  others  Hving  in  that  turbid  thirteenth 
century,  saw  through  the  husks  of  things  to  their 
very  core. 

He  died  at  the  close  of  the  century  —  probably  in 
the  year  129J: ;  and  I  have  gone  back  to  that  far-away 
time  —  somewhat  out  of  our  forward  track  —  and 
have  given  you  a  glimpse  of  this  Franciscan  inno- 
vator and  wrestler  with  authorities,  in  order  that  I 
might  mate  him  with  two  other  radical  thinkera 
whose  period  of  activity  belonged  to  the  latter  half 
of  the  succeeding  century :  I  mean  Langlande  and 
Wyclif.  And  before  we  go  on  to  speak  of  these 
two,  we  will  set  up  a  few  waymarks,  so  that  we  may 
not  lose  our  historic  bearings  in  the  drift  of  the  in- 
tervening years. 

Bacon  died,  as  we  have  said,  in  1294.  William 
Wallace  fought  his  great  battle  of  Cambuskenneth 
in  1297.  Those  who  have  read  that  old  favorite  of 
school-boys,  Miss  Porter's  "Scottish  Chiefs,"  will 
not  need  to  have  their  memories  refreshed  about 
William  Wallace.  Indeed,  that  hero  will  be  apt  to 
loom  too  giant-like  in  their  thought,  and  with  a  halo 


82  LAXDS,  LETTERS,  i-  KINGS. 

about  him  which  I  suspect  sober  history  would 
hardly  justify.  Wallace  was  executed  at  Smithfield 
(jVIiss  Porter  says  he  died  of  grief  before  the  axe 
fell)  in  1305  ;  and  that  stout,  flax-haired  King  Ed- 
ward I,  Avho  had  humbled  Scotland  at  Falkirk  — 
who  was  personally  a  match  for  the  doughtiest  of 
his  knights  —  who  was  pious  (as  the  times  went), 
and  had  set  up  beautiful  memorial  crosses  to  his 
good  Queen  Eleanor  —  who  had  re\'ived  King  Ar- 
tlmr's  Eound  Table  at  Kenilworth,  died  only  two 
years  after  he  had  cruelly  planted  the  head  of  Wallace 
on  London  Bridge.  Then  came  the  weak  Edward 
n.,  and  the  victories  of  Bruce  of  Bannockburn,  and 
tliat  weary  Piers  Gaveston  story,  and  the  shocking 
death  of  the  King  in  Berkeley  Castle.  The  visitor 
to  Berkeley  (it  is  in  Gloucestershire,  and  only  two 
miles  away  from  station  on  the  jVIidland  Railway) 
can  still  see  the  room  where  the  murder  was  done : 
and  this  Castle  of  Berkeley  —  strangely  enough  — 
has  been  kejDt  in  repair,  and  inhabited  continuously 
from  the  twelfth  century  until  now  ;  its  moat,  its 
keep,  and  its  warders  walks  are  all  intact. 

After  this  Edward  IL  came  the  great  Edward  in. 
—  known  to  us  through  Froissart  and  the  Black 


ROGER   BACOX.  83 

Prince*  and  Crecy  and  Poitiers,  and  by  Windsor 
Castle  —  which  he  built  —  and  by  Chaucer  and  Wy- 
clif  and  Langlande  and  Gower,  who  grew  up  while 
he  was  king  ;  known  to  us  also  in  a  worse  way,  for 
outliving  all  his  good  qualities,  and  becoming  in  his 
last  days  a  peevish  and  tempestuous  voluptuary. 

Some  few  foreign  way-marks  I  also  give,  that  the 
reader  may  have  more  distinctly  in  mind  this  great 
historic  epoch.  Dante  died  in  exile  at  Ravenna,  six 
3'ears  before  Edward  III.  came  to  power.  Boccaccio 
was  then  a  boy  of  fourteen,  and  Petrarch  nine  years 
his  elder.  And  on  the  year  that  Crecy  was  fought 
and  won  —  through  the  prowess  of  the  Black  Prince, 
and  when  the  Last  of  the  Tribunes,  as  you  see  him  in 
Bulwer  Lytton's  novel,  was  feeling  his  way  to  lord- 
ship in  Rome,  —  there  was  Hving  somewhere  in 
Shropshire,  a  country-born,  boy  poet  —  not  yet 
ripened  into  utterance,  but  looking  out  with  keen 
eyes  and  soreness  of   heart  upon  the  sufferings  of 

*  The  story  of  the  Black  Prince  meets  with  revival  in  our 
day,  by  the  recent  publication  oi '■'■  Le  Prince  Noir,  Poeme 
(hi  Herault  di'Armes  Chandos,'"  edited,  translated,  etc.,  by 
Francisque  Michel,  F.A.S.  Fotheringham  :  London,  1884. 
The  original  MS.  is  understood  to  be  preserved  in  the  Li- 
brary of  Worcester  College,  Oxford. 


84  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

poor  country  folk,  and  upon  the  wantonness  of  the 
monks,  and  the  extravagance  of  the  rich,  and  the 
hatefulness  of  the  proud  —  all  which  was  set  forth 
at  a  later  day  in  the  Vision  of  Piers  Plowman. 

William  Langlande. 

This  was  William  Langlande*  (or  Langley,  as  oth- 
ers call  him),  reputed  author  of  the  poem  I  have 
named.  It  makes  a  little  book  —  earliest,  I  think,  of 
all  books  written  in  English  —  which  you  will  be 
apt  to  find  in  a  well-appointed  private  library  of  our 
day.  I  won't  say  that  it  is  bought  to  read,  so  much 
as  to  stand  upon  the  shelves  {so  many  books  are)  as 
a  good  and  sufficient  type  of  old  respectabihties. 
Yet;  for  all  this,  it  is  reasonably.;  readable  ;  with 
crabbed  alHterative  rhythm  ;  —  some  Latin  inter- 
mixed, as  if  the  writer  had  been  a  priest  (as  some 

*  Precise  dates  are  wanting  with  respect  to  Langlande. 
Facts  respecting  his  personal  history  are  derived  from  what 
leaks  out  in  his  poem,  and  from  interpolated  notes  (in  a  for- 
eign hand)  upon  certain  MS.  copies.  Of  three  different 
texts  (published  by  the  E.  E.  Text  Soc.)  Mr.  Skeat  dates  one 
about  1362  —  a  second  in  or  ahont  1377,  and  the  third  still 
later.     The  first  imprint  has  date  of  1550. 


WILLIAM  LANGLAiXDE.  85 

allege) ;  and  such  knowledge  of  life  and  of  current 
shortcomings  among  all  sorts  of  people  as  showed 
him  to  be  a  wide-awake  and  fearless  observer.  It  is 
in  the  form  of  an  Allegory,  Christian  in  its  motive  ; 
so  that  you  might  almost  say  that  the  author  was  an 
immature  and  crude  and  yet  sharper  kind  of  John 
Bunyan  who  would  turn  Great-Heart  into  a  Ploio- 
man.  The  nomenclature  also  brings  to  mind  the 
tinker  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  ;  there  is  a  Sir  Do- 
Well  and  his  daughter  Do-Better :  then  there  is  Sir 
In-wit  with  his  sons  See-ivell  and  Say-well  and  Hear- 
well,  and  the  doughtiest  of  them  all  —  SirWork-ivell. 
We  may,  I  think,  as  reasonably  believe  that  Bunyan 
hovered  over  this  book,  as  that  IMilton  took  hints 
from  the  picture  of  Pandemonium  attributed  to 
Csedmon. 

Langlande  is  a  little  mixed  and  raw  oftentimes ; 
but  he  is  full  of  shrewdness  and  of  touches  of  a 
rough  and  unwashed  humor.  There  is  little  tender- 
ness of  poetic  feeling  in  his  verse  ;  and  scarcely  ever 
does  it  rise  to  anything  approaching  stateliness ;  but 
it  keeps  a  good  dog-trot  jog,  as  of  one  who  knew 
what  he  was  doing,  and  meant  to  do  it.  What  he 
meant  was  —  to  whip  the  vices  of  the  priests  and  to 


86  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  A-LVCS. 

scourge  the  cove tousn  ess  of  the  rich  auJ  of  the  men 
in  power.  It  is  EugHsh  all  over  ;  Euglish  *  in  the 
homeliness  of  its  language  ;  he  makes  even  Norman 
words  sound  homely ;  English  in  spirit  too  ;  full  of 
good,  hearty,  grumbling  humor  —  a  sort  of  pre- 
dated and  poetic  kind  of  Protestantism.  Plums 
might  be  picked  out  of  it  for  the  decoration  of  a 
good  radical  or  agrarian  speech  of  to-day. 

Of  his  larger  religious  and  political  drift  no  ex- 
tracts ^vill  give  one  a  proper  idea  ;  only  a  reading 
from  beginning  to  end  will  do  this.  One  or  two 
snatches  of  his  verse  I  give,  to  show  his  manner : 

And  tlianue  cam  coveitise, 
Kan  I  hym  uaght  discryve, 
So  hungrily  and  liolwe 
Sire  Herry  hym  loked. 
He  was  hitel-browed, 
And  baber-lipped  also 
With  two  blered  eighen 
As  a  blynd  hagge  ; 
And  as  a  letheren  purs 
Lolled  his  chekes, 

*  Not  that  he  is  specially  free  from  foreign  vocables: 
Marsh  {Lee.  VL.,  Eng.  Language)  gives  his  percentage  of 
Anglo-Saxon  words  in  Passiis  XTV.  at  only  84.  See  also 
Skeat's  Genl.  Preface,  p.  xxxiii. 


WILLIAM  LANCLANDE.  87 

Well  sidder  [wider]  than  his  chyn 

Thei  chyveled  [shrivelled]  for  elde  ; 

And  as  a  bonde-man  of  his  bacon 

His  herd  was  bi-draveled, 

With  an  hood  on  his  heed. 

A  lousy  hat  above 

And  in  a  tawny  tabard 

Of  twelf  wyuter  age.  —  2847  Pass.  V. 

And  again,  from  the  same  Fassiis  (he  dividing 
thus  his  poem  into  ste2)s  or  paces)  I  cite  this  self- 
drawn  picture  of  Envj' : 

Betwene  manye  and  manye 

I  make  debate  ofte, 

That  bothe  lif  and  lyme 

Is  lost  thorugh  my  speche. 

And  when  I  mete  hym  in  market 

That  I  moost  hate, 

I  hailse  hym  hendely  [politely] 

As  I  his  frend  were  ; 

For  he  is  doughtier  than  I, 

I  dar  do  noon  ootlier  : 

Ac,  hadde  I  maistrie  and  myght, 

God  woot  my  wille  ! 

And  whanne  I  come  to  the  kirk 

And  sliolde  kneel  to  the  roode, 

And  preye  for  the  peple     .     .     o 

Awey  fro  the  auter  thaune 

Turne  I  myne  eighen 

And  bi-holde  Eleyne 


8&  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KINGS. 

Hath  a  newe  cote  ; 

I  wisshe  tlianne  it  were  myn, 

And  al  the  web  after. 

For  who  so  hath  moore  than  I 

Tliat  angreth  me  soore, 

And  thus  I  lyve  love-lees, 

Like  a  luther  [mad]  dogge  ; 

That  al  my  body  bolneth  [swelleth] 

For  bitter  of  my  galle.  —  vers.  2667. 

It  is  a  savage  picture ;  and  as  savagely  true  as  was 
ever  drawn  of  Envy.  Those  who  cultivated  the  ele- 
gancies of  letters,  and  delighted  in  the  pretty  rhym- 
ing-balance of  Romance  veree,  would  hardly  have 
rehshed  him;  but  the  average  thinker  and  worker 
would  and  did.  It  is  specially  noteworthy  that  the 
existing  MSS.  of  this  poem,  of  which  there  are  very 
many,  are  without  expensive  ornamentation  by  il- 
luminated initial  letters,  or  otherwise,  indicating 
that  its  circulation  was  among  those  who  did  not 
buy  a  book  for  its  luxuries  of  "make-uj^,"  but  for 
its  pith.  A  new  popularity  came  to  the  book  after 
printing  was  begun,  and  made  it  known  to  those 
who  sympathized  with  its  protesting  spirit ; — most 
of  all  when  the  monasteries  went  down  and  readers 
saw  how  this  old  grumbler  had  prophesied  truly  — 


WILLIAM  LANGLANDE.  89 

in  saying  "  the  Abbot  of  Abingdon  and  all  bis  peo- 
ple should  get  a  knock  from  a  king  "  —  as  tbey  did  ; 
and  a  hard  one  it  was. 

Langlande  was  born  in  the  West,  and  had  wan- 
dered over  the  beautiful  Malvern  hills  of  Worcester- 
shire in  his  day  :  but  he  went  afterward  to  live  in 
London,  which  he  knew  from  top  to  bottom  ;  had  a 
wife  there,  "Kytte,"  and  a  daughter,  "Calote;"* 
shaved  his  head  like  a  priest ;  was  tall  —  so  tall  he 
came  to  be  called  "Long  Will."  He  showed  little 
respect  for  fine  dresses,  though  he  saw  them  all ;  he 
was  in  London  when  Chaucer  was  there  and  when 
the  greater  poet  was  writing,  and  had  higher-placed 
friends  than  himself;  but  he  never  met  him,  —  from 
anything  that  appears  ;  never  met  Wyclif  either, 
with  whom  he  must  have  had  very  much  thinking 

*  In  saying  this  I  follow  literal  statement  of  the  poem 
{Pass,  xviii.,  12,948),  as  do  Tyrwhit,  Price,  and  Rev.  Mr. 
Skeat,  whose  opinions  overweigh  the  objections  of  Mr. 
Wright,  [Introduction,  p.  is.,  note  8,  to  Wright's  Piers 
Plowman.)  The  Christian  name  William  seems  determined 
by  a  find  of  Sir  Frederic  Madden  on  the  fly-leaf  of  a 
MS.  in  the  library  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin. 

Piers  Plowman's  Creed,  often  printed  with  the  Vision,  is 
now  by  best  critics  counted  the  work  of  another  hand. 


90  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &>  KLVGS. 

in  common,  and  who  also  must  have  been  in  Lon- 
don many  a  time  when  tall  Will  Langlande  sidled 
along  Fenchurch  Street,  ox-  Cornhill.  Yet  he  is 
worthy  to  be  named  with  him  as  representing  a 
popular  seam  in  that  great  drift  of  independent  and 
critical  thought,  which  was  to  ripen  into  the  Refor- 
mation. 

John  Wyclif. 

In  the  year  when  gunpowder  was  first  burned  in 
battle,  and  when  Rienzi  was  trying  to  poise  himself 
"svith  a  good  balance  on  the  rocking  shoulders  of  the 
Eoman  people,  John  Wyclif,  the  great  English  re- 
former and  the  first  translator  of  the  Bible,  was  just 
turned  of  twenty  and  poring  over  his  books,  not  im- 
probably in  that  Baliol  College,  Oxford  —  of  which 
in  the  ripeness  of  his  age  he  was  to  become  Master. 

We  know  little  of  his  early  personal  histor}',  save 
that  he  came  from  a  beautiful  Yorkshire  valley  in 
the  North  of  England,  where  the  Tees,  forming  the 
border  line  of  the  County  of  Durham,  sweeps  past 
the  little  ])arish  of  Wyclif,  and  where  a  manor- 
house  of  the  same   name  —  traditionally  the  birth- 


JOHN  IVYCLIF.  91 

place  of  the  Eeformer  —  stands  upon  a  lift  of  the 
river  bank.  Its  grounds  stretch  away  to  those 
"  Eokeby  "  woods,  whose  murmurs  and  shadows  re- 
lieve the  dullest  of  the  poems  of  Scott. 

But  there  is  no  record  of  him  thereabout :  if  in- 
deed he  were  born  upon  that  lift  of  the  Tees  bank, 
the  proprietors  thereof  —  who  through  many  gene- 
rations were  stanch  Romanists  —  would  have  shown 
no  honor  to  the  arch-heretic  ;  and  it  is  noteworthy 
that  within  a  chapel  attached  to  the  AVyclif  manor- 
house,  mass  was  said  and  the  Pope  reverenced,  down 
to  a  very  recent  time.  John  "VVyclif,  in  the  great 
crowd  of  his  writings,  whether  English  or  Latin, 
told  no  story  of  himself  or  of  his  young  days.  We 
have  only  clear  sight  of  him  when  he  has  reached 
full  manhood  —  when  he  has  come  to  \}a&  master- 
ship of  Baliol  Hall,  and  to  eloquent  advocacy  of  the 
rights  and  dignities  of  England,  as  against  the  Papal 
demand  for  tribute.  On  this  service  he  goes  up  to 
London,  and  is  heard  there  —  maybe  in  Pai'liament ; 
certainly  is  heard  with  such  approval  that  he  is,  only 
a  few  years  thereafter  —  sent  with  a  commission,  to 
treat  with  ambassadors  from  the  Pope,  at  the  old 
city  of  Bruges. 


92  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

This  was  a  rich  city  —  called  the  Venice  of  the 
North  —  and  princes  and  nobles  from  all  Europe 
were  to  be  met  there  ;  its  great  town-house  even 
then  lifted  high  into  the  air  that  Belfrey  of  Bruges 
which  has  become  in  our  day  the  nestling-place  of 
song.  But  Wyclif  was  not  overawed  b}'  any  splen- 
dors of  scene  or  association.  He  insisted  doggedly 
upon  the  rights  of  EngUshmen  as  against  Papal  pre- 
tensions. John  of  Gaunt,  a  son  of  the  king,  stood 
by  Wychf ;  not  only  befriending  him  there,  but 
afterward  when  Papish  bulls  were  thundered  against 
him,  and  when  he  was  summoned  up  to  London  — 
as  befell  in  due  time  —  to  answer  for  his  misdeeds  ; 
and  when  the  populace,  who  had  caught  a  liking  for 
the  stalwart  independence  of  the  man,  crowded 
through  the  streets  (tall  Will  Langlande  very  prob- 
ably among  them),  to  stand  between  the  Reformer 
and  the  judges  of  the  Church.  He  did  not  believe 
in  Ecclesiastic  hierarchies  ;  and  it  is  quite  certain 
that  he  was  as  little  liked  by  the  abbots  and  the 
bishops  and  the  fat  vicars,  as  by  the  Pope. 

I  have  said  he  was  befriended  by  John  of  Gaunt ; 
and  this  is  a  name  which  it  is  worth  while  for  stu- 
dents of  English  history  to  remember  ;  not  only  be- 


JOHN    IVVCLIF.  93 

cause  he  was  a  brother  of  the  famous  Black  Prince 
(and  a  better  man  than  he,  though  he  did  not  fight 
so  many  battles),  but  because  he  was  also  a  good 
friend  of  the  poet  Chaucer  —  as  we  shall  find.  It 
will  perhaps  help  one  to  keep  him  in  mind,  if  I  re- 
fer to  that  glimpse  we  get  of  him  in  the  early  scenes 
of  Shakespeare's  tragedy  of  Richard  II.,  where  he 
makes  a  play  upon  his  name  : 

O,  how  tlicat  name  befits  my  composition  ! 
Old  Gaunt,  indeed  !  and  gaunt  in  being  old. 
Within  me  grief  hath  kept  a  tedious  fast 
And  who  abstains  from  meat,  that  is  not  gaunt  ? 

A  good  effigy  of  this  John,  in  his  robes,  is  on  the 
glass  of  a  window  in  AU-Souls'  College,  Oxford. 

But  such  great  friends,  and  "Wyclif  numbered  the 
widow  of  the  Black  Prince  among  them,  could  not 
shield  him  entirely  from  Eomish  wrath,  -when  he 
began  to  call  the  Pope  a  "  cut-purse  ; "  and  his  argu- 
ments were  as  scathing  as  his  epithets,  and  had 
more  reason  in  them.  He  Avas  comjjelled  to  forego 
his  teachings  at  Oxford,  and  came  to  new  trials,  *  at 

*  Church  chroniclers  who  were  contemporaries  of  Wyclip, 
girded  at  him  as  a  blasphemer.  Capgrave  :  Oron.  of  Emj. 
ilioUs  Series),  speaks  of  him  as  "  the  orgon  of  the  devel,  the 


94  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  AVNGS. 

which  —  as  traditions  run  —  he  wore  an  air  of  great 
dignity  ;  and  old  portraits  show  us  a  thin,  tall  fig- 
ure —  a  little  bent  with  over-study  ;  his  features 
sharp-cut,  with  lips  full  of  firmness,  a  flowing 
white  beard  and  piercing  eyes  —  gio"ndng  with  the 
faith  that  was  in  him.  This  was  he  who  blocked 
out  the  path  along  which  England  stumbled  through 
Lollardry  quagmires,  and  where  Huss,  the  Bohe- 
mian, walked  in  after  days  with  a  clumsy,  for- 
ward tread,  and  which  Luther  in  his  later  time  j^ut 
all  a-light  with  his  torch  of  flame. 

The  Kinsr —  and  it  was  one  of  the  last  cfood  deeds 


enmy  of  the  C'herch,  the  confusion  of  men,  the  ydol  of 
heresie,"  etc.  Netter  collected  his  (alleged)  false  doctrines 
under  title  of  Bundles  of  Tares  ( Fasciculi  Zizaniarum),  Ed. 
by  Shirley,  1858.  Dr.  Robt.  Vaughan  is  author  of  a  very 
pleasant  monograph  on  Wyclif,  with  much  topographic  lore. 
Dr.  Lechler  is  a  more  scholarly  contributor  to  Wyclif 
literature ;  and  the  Early  Eng.  Text  Soc.  has  published 
(1880)  Mathews'  Ed.  of  ' '  Jdtherto  uyiprinted  Eng.  works  of 
Wyclif,  with  notice  of  his  life."  Rudolph  Buddenseig, 
(of  Dresden)  has  Ed.  his  polemical  works  in  Latin  (old)  besides 
contributing  an  interesting  notice  for  the  anniversary  just 
passed.  Nor  can  I  forbear  naming  in  this  connection  the 
very  eloquent  qiiin-centenary  address  of  Dr.  Richard  S. 
Storrs,  of  Brooklyn,  X.  Y. 


JOHN   WYCLIF.  95 

of  Edward  III.  —  gave  to  the  old  man  who  was  railed 
at  by  Popes  and  bishops,  a  church  living  at  Lutter- 
Avorth,  a  pleasant  village  in  Leicestershii-e,  upon  a 
branch  of  that  Avon,  which  flows  by  Stratford 
Church  ;  and  here  the  white-haired  old  man  —  some 
five  hundred  years  ago  (1384)  finished  his  Hfe  ;  and 
here  the  sexton  of  the  church  will  show  one  to-day 
the  gown  in  which  he  preached,  and  the  pulpit  in 
which  he  stood. 

Even  now  I  have  not  spoken  of  those  facts  about 
this  early  Reformer,  which  are  best  kept  in  memory, 
and  which  make  his  name  memorable  in  connection 
with  the  literature  of  England.  In  the  quiet  of 
Lutterworth  he  translated  the  Latin  Bible  (j)rob- 
ably  not  knowing  well  either  Greek  or  Hebrew,  as 
very  few  did  in  that  day)  ;  not  doing  all  this  work 
himself,  but  specially  looking  after  the  Gospels,  and 
perhajDS  all  of  the  New^  Testament. 

The  reader  will,  1  think,  be  interested  in  a  little 
fragment  of  this  work  of  his  (from  Matthew  viii.). 

"  Sothely  [verily]  Jhesus  seeynge  many  cumpanyes  about 
hym,  bad  Im  disdplis  go  ouer  the  watir.  And  oo  [one]  scribe 
or  a  maa  of  lawe,  commynge  to,  saide  to  hym  —  Maistre,  I 
sliall  sue   [follow]   thee  whidir   euer  thou    shalt  go.      And 


96  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KLYGS. 

Jhesus  said  to  hym,  Foxis  han  dichis  or  borrowis  [holes]  and 
briddes  of  the  eir  han  nestis  ;  bub  mannes  soue  hath  nat 
wher  he  reste  his  heued.  Sotheli  an  other  of  his  disciplis 
saide  to  hym  — •  Lord,  sufEre  mo  go  first  and  bir^'e  my  fadir. 
Forsothe  Jhesus  saide  to  hym,  Sue  thou  me,  and  late  dede 
men  birye  her  dead  men." 

It  is  surely  not  very  hard  reading ;  —  still  less  so 
in  the  form  as  revised  by  Purvey,*  an  old  assistant 
of  liis  in  the  Parish  of  Lutterworth  ;  and  it  made 
the  groundwork  of  an  English  sacred  dialect,  which 
with  its  Thees  and  Thous  and  Speaketh  and  Heareth 
and  Praijeth  has  given  its  flavor  to  all  succeeding 
translations,  and  to  all  utterances  of  praise  and 
thanksgiving  in  every  English  pulpit. 

Not  only  this,  but  Wyclif  by  his  translation 
opened  an  easy  English  pathway  into  the  arcana  of 
sacred  mysteries,  which  in  all  previous  time  —  save 
for  exceptional  parts,  such  as  the  i^ai'aphrase  of 
Csedmon,  or  the  Ormulum,  or  the  Psalter  of  Aldhelm 
and  other  fragmentary  Anglo-Saxon  versions  of 
Scripture  —  had  been  veiled  from  the  common 
people  in  the  dimness  of  an  unknown  tongue.     But 


*  Those  who  Vve  books  which  are  royal  in  their  dignities  of 
print  and  paper,  will  be  interested  in  Forshall  &  Madden's 
elegant  4to.  edition  of  the  Wyclifite  vei'sions  of  the  Bible. 


CHA  UCER.  97 

from  tlie  date  of  Wjclif 's  translation  —  forward,  for- 
ever—  whatever  man,  ricli  or  poor,  could  read  an 
English  ordinance  of  the  King,  or  a  bye-law  of  a 
British  parish,  could  also — though  he  might  be 
driven  to  stealthy  reading — spell  his  way  back, 
through  the  old  aisles  of  Sacred  History,  where 
Moses  and  the  prophets  held  their  place,  and  into 
the  valleys  of  Palestine,  where  Bethlehem  lay,  and 
where  Christ  was  hung  upon  the  tree. 

Chaucer. 

Now  we  come  to  a  Poet  of  these  times  ;  not  a 
poet  by  courtesy,  not  a  small  poet,  but  a  real 
and  a  great  one.  His  name  is  Chaucer.  You  may 
not  read  him  ;  you  may  find  his  speech  too  old- 
fashioned  to  jilease  you  ;  you  may  not  easily  get 
through  its  meaning  ;  but  if  you  do,  and  come  to 
study  him  with  any  warmth,  the  more  you  study 
him  the  more  you  will  like  him.  And  this  —  not 
because  there  are  curious  and  wonderful  tales  in  his 
verse  to  interest  you  ;  not  because  your  passion  will 
be  kindled  by  any  extraordinary  show  of  dramatic 
power ;   but    because   his    humor,  and    gentleness, 


98  LAXDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

and  grace  of  touch,  and  exquisite  harmonies  of  lan» 
guage  will  wiu  upon  you  page  by  page,  and  story 
by  story. 

He  was  born  —  probably  in  London  —  some  time 
during  the  second  quarter  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury ;  *  and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  an  eaiiy 
home  of  his  was  in  or  near  Thames  Street,  which 
runs  parallel  with  the  river,  —  a  i-egion  now  built  up 
and  overshadowed  with  close  lines  of  tall  and  grimy 
warehouses.  But  the  boy  Chaucer,  living  there  five 
hundred  and  more  years  ago,  might  have  caught 
between  the  timber  houses  glimj)ses  of  cultivated 
fields  lying  on  the  Southwark  shores  ;  and  if  he  had 
wandered  along  Wallbrook  to  Cheapside,  and  thence 
westerly  by  Newgate  to  Smithfield  Common  —  where 

*  The  biograpliers  used  to  say  1328  :  this  is  now  thought 
inadmissible  by  most  commentators.  FuiiNivAL  makes  the 
birth-year  1340 — in  which  he  is  followed  by  the  two  Wards, 
and  by  Professor  Minto  {Br.  Ency.).  Evidence,  however, 
is  not  as  yet  conclusive  ;  and  tliere  is  an  even  cliance  that 
furtlier  investigations  may  set  back  the  birth-year  to  a  date 
which  will  better  justify  and  make  more  seemly  those  croak- 
ings  of  age  which  crept  into  some  of  the  latter  verse  of  tlie 
poet.  For  some  facts  looking  in  that  direction,  and  for  cer- 
tain interesting  genealogic  Chaucer  puzzles,  see  paper  in 
London  Atheneum  for  January  29,  1881,  by  Walter  Rye. 


CHA  UCER.  99 

he  may  have  watched  tournaments  that  Froissart 
watched,  and  Philippa,  queen  of  Edward  III,  had 
watched  —  he  would  have  found  open  country  ;  and 
on  quiet  days  would  have  heard  the  birds  singing- 
there,  and  have  seen  green  meadows  lying  on  either 
side  the  river  Fleet  —  which  river  is  now  lost  in 
sewers,  and  is  planted  over  with  houses. 

On  Ludgate  Hill,  in  that  far-off  time,  rose  the  tall 
and  graceful  spire  of  old  St.  Paul's,  and  underneath 
its  roof  was  a  vista  of  Gothic  arches  seven  hundred 
feet  in  length.  The  great  monastery  of  the  Tem- 
plars —  and  of  the  Knights  of  St.  John  —  where  we 
go  now  to  see  that  remnant  of  it,  called  the  Temple 
Church, — had,  only  shortly  before,  passed  into  the 
keeping  of  the  Lawyers ;  the  Strand  was  like  a 
country  road,  with  great  country-houses  and  gar- 
dens looking  upon  the  water ;  Charing  Cross  was  a 
hamlet  midway  between  the  Temple  and  a  parish 
called  Westminster,  where  a  huge  Abbey  Church 
stood  by  the  river  bank. 

Some  biographers  have  labored  to  show  that 
Chaucer  was  of  high  family  —  with  titles  in  it.  But 
I  think  we  care  very  little  about  this ;  one  story, 
now   fully  accredited,  makes  his  father    a  vintner. 


loo  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KINGS. 

ov  wine-dealer,  with  a  coat-of-arms,  showing  upon 
one  half  a  red  bar  upon  white,  and  upon  the  other 
white  on  red  ;  as  if  —  hints  old  Thomas  Fuller  — 
'twas  dashed  with  red  wine  and  white.  This  es- 
cutcheon with  its  parti-colored  bars  may  be  seen  in 
the  upper  left  corner  of  the  portrait  of  Chaucer, 
which  hangs  now  in  the  picture-gallerj'  at  Oxford. 
And  —  for  that  matter  —  it  was  not  a  bad  thing  to 
be  a  vintner  in  that  day  ;  for  we  have  record  of  one 
of  them  who,  in  the  year  after  the  battle  of  Poitiers, 
entertained  at  his  house  in  the  Vintry,  Edward 
King  of  England,  John  King  of  France,  David  King 
of  Scotland,  and  the  King  of  Cyprus.  And  he  not 
only  dined  them,  but  won  their  money  at  play  ;  and 
afterward,  in  a  very  unking-like  fashion  —  paid 
back  the  money  he  had  won. 

Chaucer  was  a  student  in  his  3'oung  days  ;  but 
never  —  as  old  stories  ran  —  at  either  Cambridge  or 
Oxford  ;  indeed,  there  is  no  need  that  we  place  him 
at  one  or  the  other.  There  were  schools  m  London 
in  those  times  —  at  St.  Paul's  and  at  Westminster  — 
in  either  of  which  he  could  have  come  by  all  the 
scholarly  epithets  or  allusions  that  aj^pear  in  his  ear- 
lier poems ;  and  for  the  culture  that  declares  itself  in 


CHAUCER.  loi 

his  riper  daj'S,  we  know  that  he  was  more  or  less  a 
student  all  his  life  —  loving  books,  and  proud  of  his 
fondness  for  them,  and  showing  all  up  and  down  his 
poems  traces  of  his  careful  reading  and  of  an  obser- 
vation as  close  and  as  quick. 

It  is  the  poet's  very  self,  who,  borne  away  in  the 
eagle's  clutch  amongst  the  stars,  gets  this  comment 
from  ajjproving  Jove  '^' : 

Tliou  hearjst  neither  that  nor  this, 
For  when  thy  Labor  all  done  is, 
And  hast  made  all  thy  reckininges 
In  stead  of  rest  and  of  new  thinges, 
Tliou  goest  home  to  thine  house  anou 
And  all  so  dombe  as  any  stone, 
Thou  sittest  at  another  boke 
Till  fully  dazed  is  thy  loke. 

But  though  we  speak  of  Chaucer  as  bookish  and 
scholarly,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  he  aimed  at, 
or  possessed  the  nice  critical  discernment,  with  re- 
spect to  the  literary  work  of  others,  which  we  now 
associate  with  highest  scholarly  attainments  ;  it  may 
well  happen  that  his  bookish  allusions  are  not  al- 
ways "by  the  letter,"  or  that  he  may  misquote,  or 

*  House  of  Fame,  Book  II. 


I02  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-   AVXGS. 

strain  a  point  in  interpretation.  He  lived  before 
the  days  of  exegetical  niceties.  He  is  attracted  by 
large  effects ;  he  searches  for  what  may  kindle  hia 
enthusiasms,  and  put  him  upon  his  own  trail  of 
song.  Books  were  nothing  to  him  if  they  did  not 
bring  illumination  ;  where  he  could  snatch  that,  he 
bun'owed  —  but  always  rather  toward  the  light 
than  toward  the  depths.  He  makes  honey  out  of 
coarse  flowers  ;  not  so  sure  always  —  nor  much  car- 
ing to  be  sure  —  of  the  name  and  habitudes  of  the 
plants  he  rifles.  He  stole  not  for  the  theft's  sake, 
but  for  the  honey's  sake ;  and  he  read  not  for 
cumulation  of  special  knowledges,  but  to  fertilize 
and  quicken  his  own  spontaneities. 

Nor  was  this  jDoet  ever  so  shapen  to  close  study, 
but  the  woods  or  the  birds  or  the  flowers  of  a  sum- 
mery day  would  take  the  bend  from  his  back,  and 
straighten  him  for  a  march  into  the  fields : 


There  is  game  none, 

That  from  my  bookes  maketli  me  to  gone, 
Save  certainly  whan  that  the  month  of  Maie 
Is  comen,  and  that  I  heare  the  foules  sing, 
And  that  the  flowris  ginuen  for  to  spring  — 
Farewell  my  booke,  and  my  devocion  I 


CHAUCER.  103 

And  swift  upon  this  in  that  musical  "  Legende  of 
Good  Women,"  comes  his  rhythmical  crowning  of 
the  Daisy  —  never  again,  in  virtue  of  his  verse,  to 
be  discrowned  — 

above  all  the  flowris  in  the  mede 

Thanne  love  I  moste  these  flowris  white  and  rede  ; 

Soche  that  men  calliu  Daisies  in  our  touu 

To  'hem  I  have  so  grete  affectionn 

As  I  said  erst,  whan  comin  is  the  Male, 

That  in  my  bedde  there  dawith  me  no  daie 

That  I  n'  am  up,  and  walking  in  the  mede 

To  sene  this  floure  ajeust  the  suuue  sprede, 

As  she  that  is  of  all  flowris  the  floure, 

Fulfilled  of  all  vertue  and  honoure 

And  evir  alike  faire  and  freshe,  of  hewe, 

And  evir  I  love  it  and  ever  alike  newe. 

These  lines  of  his  have  given  an  everlasting  per- 
fume to  that  odorless  flower. 

How  it  befell  that  this  son  of  a  vintner  came  first 
to  have  close  association  with  members  of  the  royal 
household  —  household  of  the  great  Edward  IH.  — 
we  cannot  tell  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  he  did  come 
at  an  eavly  day  to  have  position  in  the  establishment 
of  the  King's  son,  Prince  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence  ; 
he  was  sometime  valet,  too,  of  Edward  III.,  and  in 


I04  LANDS,  LETTERS,  £-  KLYCS. 

other  years  a  familiar  protige  of  Jolm  of  Gaunt  — ■ 
putting  his  poet's  gloss  upon  coui'tly  griefs  and 
love-makings. 

It  is  certain,  moreover,  that  in  the  immediate  ser- 
vice of  either  Prince  or  King,  he  went  to  the  wars 
—  as  every  young  man  of  high  spirit  in  England 
yearned  to  do,  when  vsrar  was  so  great  a  part  of  the 
business  of  life,  and  when  the  Black  Prince  was  gal- 
loping in  armor  and  in  victory  over  the  fields  of 
Guienne.  But  it  was  a  bad  excursion  the  poet  hit 
upon  ;  he  went  when  disaster  attended  the  English 
forces ;  he  was  taken  prisonei*,  and  though  ransomed 
shortlj'  thereafter  —  as  the  record  shows  —  it  is  un- 
certain when  he  returned  ;  uncertain  if  he  did  not 
linger  for  years  among  the  vineyards  of  Fi'ance  ; 
maybe  writing  there  his  translation  of  the  famous 
Roman  de  la  Bose*  — certainly  loving  this  and  other 

*  There  is  question  of  tlie  authenticity  of  the  translation 
usually  attributed  to  Chaucer  —  of  which  there  is  only  one 
fifteeiath  century  MS.  extant.  Some  version,  however, 
Chaucer  did  make,  if  his  own  averment  is  to  be  credited. 
Prof.  MiNTO  {Br.  Ency.)  accepts  the  well-known  version  ; 
so  does  Ward  {Men  of  Letters);  Messrs.  Bradshaw  (of 
Cambridge)  and  Prof.  Ten  Brink  doubt  —  a  doubt  in  wliicb 
Mr.  Humphrey  Ward  {En(i.  Poets)  seems  to  share. 


CHAUCER.  105 

such,  and  growing  by  study  of  these  Southern  melo- 
dies into  graces  of  his  own,  to  overlap  and  adorn 
his  Saxon  stui'diness  of  speech. 

There  are  recent  continental  critics  *  indeed,  who 
claim  him  as  French,  and  as  finding  not  only  his 
felicities  of  verse,  but  his  impulse  and  his  motives 
among  the  lilies  of  France.  He  does  love  these 
lilies  of  a  surety ;  but  I  think  he  loves  the  English 
daisies  better,  and  that  it  is  with  a  thoroughly  Eng- 
lish spirit  that  he  "powders"  the  meadows  with 
their  red  and  white,  and  sets  among  them  the  green 
blades  of  those  island  grasses,  which  flash  upon  his 
"  morwenyngs  of  Male."  To  these  times  may  pos- 
sibly belong —  if  indeed  Chaucer  wrote  it — "The 
Court  of  Love."  Into  the  discussion  of  its  au- 
thenticity we  do  not  enter ;  we  run  to  cover  un- 
der an  ignorance  which  is  more  blissful  than  the 
wisdom  that  weai'ies  itself  with  comparison  of  dates, 
with  laws  of  j)rosody,  with  journeyman-like  estimate 
of  the  tinklings  of  this  or  that  sjiurt  of  rhyming 
habit.  If  Chaucer  did  not  write  it,  we  lift  our  hat 
to  the  unknown  melodist  —  who  can  jrat  the  birds 
in  choir  —  and  pass  on. 

*  Sandras  :  Etude  sxir  Chaucer, 


lo6  LANDS,  LETTERS,  6-  KINGS. 

When  our  poet  does  reappear  in  London,  it  ia 
not  to  tell  any  storj^  of  the  war  —  of  its  hazards,  or 
of  its  triumphs.     Indeed,  it  is  remarkable  that  this 
lissome  poet,  whose  words  like  bangles  shook  out 
all  tunes  to  his  step,  and  who  lived  in  the  very  heart 
of  the  days  of  Poitiers  —  when  the  doughty  young 
Black  Prince  kindled  a  martial  furor  that  was  like 
the   old  crusade  craze  to  follow   Cccur  de  Lion  to 
battle  —  remarkable,  I  say,  that  Chaucer,  living  on 
the  high  tide  of  war  —  living,  too,  in  a  court  where 
he  must  have  met  Froissart,  that  pet  of  the  Queen, 
who  gloried   in  giving   tongue    to  his    enthusiasm 
about  the  deeds  of  knighthood  —  wonderful,  I  say, 
that  Chaucer  should  not  have  brought  into  any  of 
his  tales  or  rhymes  the  din  and  the  alarums  and  the 
seething  passions  of  war.   There  are  indeed  glimpses 
of  fluttering  pennons  and  of  sjDoar  thrusts  ;  maybe, 
also,  purple  gouts  of  blood  welling  out  from  his 
page  ;  but  these  all  have  the  unreal  look  of  the  tour- 
ney, to  which  they  mostly  attach ;  he  never  scores 
martial  scenes  with  a  dagger.     For  all  that  Crecy 
or  its  smoking  artillery  had  to  do  with  his  song,  he 
might  have  sung  a  century  earlier,  or  he  might  have 
sung  a  century  later.     Indeed,  he  does  not  seem  to 


CHAUCER.  107 

us  a  man  of  action,  notwithstanding  his  court  con- 
nection and  his  somewhile  official  place  ;  —  not  even 
a  man  of  loudly  declared  i>ublic  policy,  but  always 
the  absorbed,  introspective,  painstaking,  quiet  ob- 
server, to  whom  Nature  in  the  gross,  with  its  hu- 
manities now  kindled  by  wanton  appetites,  and  now 
lifted  by  reverence  and  love  (with  the  everlasting 
broidery  of  flowers  and  trees  and  sunshine),  was  al- 
ways alluring  him  from  things  accidental  and  of  the 
time  —  though  it  were  time  of  royal  Philip's  ruin, 
or  of  a  conquest  of  Aquitaine. 

Yet  withal,  this  Chaucer  is  in  some  sense  a  man 
of  the  world  and  courtier.  The  "  Boke  of  the 
Duchesse  "  tells  us  this.  And  he  can  weave  chaplets 
for  those  Avho  have  gone  through  the  smoke  of  bat- 
tles —  though  his  own  inclination  may  not  lead  him 
thither.  To  a  date  not  very  remote  fi-om  that  whicli 
belongs  to  the  "Duchesse"  must  in  all  probability 
be  assigned  that  other  well-known  minor  poem  of 
Chaucer's,    called    the    "  Parlament    of    Foules."  * 

*  A  notable  edition  is  that  of  Prof.  Lounsbury  (Ginn  & 
Heath,  1877)  ;  and  it  is  much  to  be  hoped  that  the  same 
editor  will  bring  his  scholarly  method  of  estimating  dates, 
sources,  and  varying  texts,  to  some  more  important  Chau- 
cerian labors. 


io8  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KLNGS. 

There  are  stories  of  his  love-lornness  in  his  young 
days,  and  of  marriage  delayed  and  of  marriage 
made  good  —  coming  mostly  from  those  who  paint 
large  pictures  with  few  pigments  • —  and  which  are 
exceeding  hazy  and  indeterminate  of  outline  :  his 
"  Troilus  and  Cresseide  "  make  us  know  that  he 
could  go  through  the  whole  gamut  of  love,  and 
fawning  and  teasing  and  conquest  and  forget- 
ting, in  lively  earnest  as  well  as  fancy  —  if  need 
Avere. 

"VVe  have  better  data  and  svu'er  ground  to  go 
upon  when  we  come  to  score  his  official  relations. 
"We  know  that  when  not  very  far  advanced  in  age 
(about  1370)  he  went  to  the  continent  on  the  King's 
service  ;  accompHshing  it  so  Avell  —  presumably  — 
that  he  is  sent  again,  very  shortly  after,  with  a  com- 
mission—  his  journey  calling  him  to  Genoa  and 
Florence  ;  Italy  and  the  Mediterranean,  then,  prob- 
ably for  the  first  time,  with  all  their  glamour  of 
old  story,  coming  to  his  view.  Some  biographers 
make  out,  from  chance  hnes  in  his  after-poems, 
that  he  went  over  to  Padua  and  saw  Petrarch  there, 
and  learned  of  him  some  stories,  which  he  after- 
ward  wroujxht    into    his    garland    of    the   Canter- 


CHAUCER.  109 

bury  Tales.  Possibly ;  *  but  it  was  not  an  easy 
journey  over  the  mountains  to  Padua  in  those 
days,  even  if  Petrarch   had   been  domiciled  there, 

—  which  is  very  doubtful ;  for  the  Italian  jjoet,  old 
and  feeble,  passed  most  of  the  latter  years  of  his  life 
at  Arqua  among  the  Euganean  hills  ;  and  if  Chaucer 
had  met  him,  Petrarch  would  have  been  more  apt  to 
ask  the  man  from  far-away,  murky  England,  about 
his  country  and  King  and  the  Prince  Lionel  (dead 
m  those  days),  who  only  a  few  years  before  had 
married,  at  Milan,  a  daughter  of  the  Visconti  —  than 
to  bore  him  with  a  story  at  second  hand  (from  Boc- 
caccio) about  the  patient  Griselda. 

*  Another  possible  epoch  of  meeting  with  Petrarch  may 
have  been  in  the  year  1368,  when  at  the  junketings  attend- 
ing the  wedding  of  Prince  Lionel  (in  Milan),  Petrarch 
was  present ;  also  —  perhaps  —  Chancer  in  the  suite  of  the 
Prince.  Froissart  makes  note  of  the  Feste,  but  without 
mention  of  either  poet,  or  of  his  own  presence.  Chap. 
ccxlvii.,  Liv.  I. 

Walter  Besant  {Br.  Ency.,  Art.  Froissart),  I  observe, 
avers  the  presence  of  all  three  —  though  without  giving  au- 
thorities. MuRATORi  {Annali)  mentions  Petrarch  as  seated 
among  the  princely  guests  —  tanta  era  la  di  lui  riputazione 

—  but  there  is,  naturally  enough,  no  naming  of  Chaucer  or 
Froissart. 


no  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  AVJVGS. 

However  this  may  be,  it  is  agreed  by  nearly  all 
commentators,  that  by  reason  of  his  southward  jour- 
neyings  and  his  after-familiarity  with  Italian  litera- 
ture (if  indeed  this  familiarity  were  not  of  earlier 
date),  that  his  own  poetic  outlook  became  greatly 
■widened,  and  he  fell  away,  in  large  degree,  from 
his  old  imitative  allegiance  to  the  jingling  measures 
of  France,  and  that  pretty 

"  Maze  of  to  and  fro, 
Where  light-heeled  numbers  laugh  and  go." 

Through  all  this  time  he  is  in  receipt  of  favors 
from  the  Government  —  sometimes  in  the  shape  of 
direct  pension  —  sometimes  of  an  annual  gift  of 
wine  —  sometimes  in  moneys  for  payment  of  his 
costs  of  travel ;  —  sometime,  too,  he  has  a  money- 
getting   place  in  the  Customs. 

John  of  Gaunt  continues  his  stalwart  friend.  In- 
deed this  Prince,  late  in  life,  and  when  he  had 
come  to  the  title  of  Duke  of  Lancaster,  married,  in 
thu'd  espousals,  a  certain  Kate  Swynford  {nee  Roet), 
who,  if  much  current  tradition  may  be  trusted,  was 
a  sister  of  Chaucer's  wife  ;  it  was,  to  be  sure,  looked 
upon   by  court   people  (for   various   reasons)  as   a 


CHA  ULER,  1 1 1 

match  beneath  the  Duke  ;  and  Froissart  tells  us 
with  a  chirrupy  air  *  of  easy  confidence  (but  there 
is  no  mention  of  the  poet)  that  the  peeresses  of  the 
court  vowed  they  would  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  new  Duchess  of  Lancaster  —  by  which  it  may 
be  seen  that  fine  ladies  had  then  the  same  methods 
of  punishing  social  audacities  which  they  have  now. 
The  tradition  has  been  given  a  new  lease  of  life  by 
the  memorial  window  which  under  rule  of  Dean  Stan- 
ley was  set  in  Westminster  Abbey ;  f  and,  however  the 
truth  may  be,  Chaucer's  life-long  familiarity  in  the 
household  of  Lancaster  is  undoubted ;  and  it  is 
every  way  likely  that  about  the  knee  of  the  poet 
may  have  frisked  and  played  the  little  Hal.  (b.  1367), 
who  came  afterward  to  be  King  Henry  IV.  It  is  to 
this  monarch,  newly  come  to  the  throne,  that  Chau- 
cer addresses  —  in  his  latter  days,  and  with  excel- 

*  ^^  Nous  lui  lairrons  toute  seide  faire  les  honneurs  ;  notis 
ne  irons  ni  viendrons  en  nulle  place  ou  eUe  soit,"  etc.  —  Chro- 
niqnes  de  Sire  Jean  Fkoissart  {J.  A.  Buchon),  tome  iii. , 
p.  236.     Paris,  1835. 

f  "  In  the  spandrils  are  the  arms  of  Chaucer  on  the  dex- 
ter side,  and  on  the  sinister,  Chaucer  impaling  those  of 
(Roet)  his  wife."  —  Appendix  III.  to  Furnival,  Temporary 
Preface,  etc. 


112  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KLNGS. 

lent  effect  —  that  little  piquant  snatch  of  verse  *  about 
the  lowuess  of  his  purse  : 

I  am  so  sorrie  now  that  ye  be  light, 
For  certes,  but  ye  make  me  heavy  cheere, 
Me  were  as  lief  be  laid  upon  my  here 
For  which  unto  your  mercie  thus  I  crie 
Be  heavie  againe,  or  elles  mote  I  die. 

Yet  he  seems  never  to  lose  his  good  humor  or  his 
sweet  complacency  ;  there  is  no  carping ;  there  is 
no  swearing  that  is  in  earnest.  His  whole  character 
we  seem  to  see  in  that  picture  of  him  which  his 
friend  Occleve  painted ;  a  miniature,  to  be  sure,  and 
upon  the  cover  of  a  MS.  of  Occleve's  poems  ;  but  it 
is  the  best  portrait  of  him  we  have.  Looking  at  it 
—  though  'tis  only  half  length  —  you  would  say  he 
was  what  we  call  a  dapper  man  ;  well-fed,  for  he 
loved  always  the  good  things  of  life  —  "not  driuk- 
less  altogether,  as  I  guess ; "  nor  yet  is  it  a  bluff 
Enghsh  face  ;  no  beefiness  ;  regular  features  —  al- 
most feminine  in  fineness  of  contour  —  with  light 
beard  upon  upper  lip  and  chin  ;  smooth  cheeks  ; 
lips  full  (rosy  red,  they  say,  in  the  painting) ;  eye 

*  Some  MSS,  have  this  poem  with  title  of  Supplication  to 
King  Bicluird. 


CHAUCER.  113 

that  is  keen,*  and  with  a  sparkle  of  humor  in  it ; 
hands  decorously  kept  ;  one  holding  a  rosary,  the 
other  pointing  —  and  pointing  as  men  j)oint  who 
see  what  they  point  at,  and  make  others  see  it  too  ; 
his  hood,  which  seems  a  part  of  his  woollen  dress, 
is  picturesquely  drawn  about  his  head,  revealing 
only  a  streak  of  hair  over  his  temple  ;  you  see  it  is 
one  who  studies  picturesqueness  even  in  costume, 
and  to  the  trimming  of  his  beard  into  a  forked 
shape  ;  —  no  lint  on  his  robe  —  you  may  be  sm-e  of 
that  ;  —  no  carelessness  anywhere  :  dainty,  deUcate, 
studious  of  effects,  but  with  mii-th  and  good  nature 
shimmering  over  his  face.  Yet  no  vagueness  or 
shakiness  of  purpose  show  theii-  weak  Hues  ;  and  in 
his  jaw  there  is  a  certain  staying  power  that  kept 
him  firm  and  active  and  made  him  jiile  book  upon 
book  in  the  new,  sweet  English  tongue,  which  out 
of  the  dialects  of  Essex  and  of  the  East  of  Eng- 
land he  had  comj)ounded,  ordered,  and  perfected, 
and  made  the  pride  of  every  man  born  to  the  in- 
heritance of  that  Island  speech. 

*  This  —  ill  the  engraving  ;  the  autotype  published  by  the 
Chaucer  Society  gives,  unfortunately,  a  very  blurred  effect 
to  the  upper  part  of  the  face  :  but  who  can  doubt  the  real 
quality  of  Chaucer's  eye  ? 


114  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

And  it  is  with  sucli  looks  and  such  forces  and 
such  a  constitutional  cheeriness,  that  this  blithe  poet 
comes  to  the  task  of  enchaining  together  his  Canter- 
bury Tales,  with  their  shrewd  trappings  of  Pro- 
logue —  his  best  work,  getting  its  last  best  touches 
after  he  is  fairly  turned  of  middle  age,  if  indeed 
he  were  not  already  among  the  sixties.  Is  it  not 
wonderful  —  the  distinctness  with  which  we  see, 
after  five  hundred  years  have  passed,  those  nine  and 
twenty  pilgrims  setting  out  on  the  sweet  April  day, 
to  travel  down  through  the  country  highways  and 
meadows  of  Kent ! 

The  fields  are  all  green,  "y-powdered  with  dai- 
sies ; "  the  birds  are  singing  ;  the  white  blossoms  are 
beginning  to  show  upon  the  hedge-rows.  Aid  the 
Pilgrims,  one  and  all,  are  so  touched  and  colored  by 
his  shrewdness  and  aptness  of  epithet  that  we  see 
them  as  plainly  as  if  they  had  been  cut  out,  figure 
by  figure,  from  the  very  middle  of  that  far-away 
century. 

There  goes  the  Knight  — 

And  that  a  worthy  man, 
That  from  the  time  that  he  first  began 
To  ryden  out,  he  lovtd  chyvalrie 
Trouth  and  honour,  freedom  and  courtesie. 


CHAUCER.  115 

And  after  him  his  son,  the  Squire,  the  bright  bach- 
elor, who 

Was  as  fresh  as  is  the  month  of  May ; 
Schort  was  his  goune,  with  sleeves  long  and  wide, 
Well  coude  he  sit  on  hors,  and  faire  ride. 
He  coude  songes  make  and  wel  endite, 
Joust  and  eke  dance,  and  wel  portray  and  write. 

Then  there  comes  the  charming  Prioress  — 

Ycleped  Madame  Eglantine. 
Ful  well  she  sang  the  service  divine, 
Entuned  in  hir  nose  ful  semely  : 
And  Frensch  she  spak  ful  fair  and  fetisly, 
After  the  scole  of  Stratford  atte  Bowe, 
For  Frensch  of  Paris  was  to  hir  uuknowe. 


Full  fetys  was  her  cloke,  as  I  was  waar 
Of  smal  coral  aboute  hir  arme  she  baar 
A  paire  of  bedcs  gauded  all  with  grene, 
And  thereon  heng  a  broch  of  gold  ful  schene 
On  which  was  first  y-writ  a  crowned  A, 
And  after  —  Amor  Vincit  Omnia  I 

Then  comes  the  Monk,  who  has  a  shiny  pate,  who 
is  stout,  well  fed,  pretentious ;  his  very  trappings 
make  a  portrait  — 

And  when  he  rood,  men  might  his  bridel  heere 
Gingling  in  a  whistlyng  wynd  as  cleere 
And  eek  as  loude  as  doth  the  chapel  belle. 


Ii6  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &■>  KINGS. 

Again,  there  was  a  Friar  —  a  wanton  and  a  merrj 
one  —  rollicksome,  and  loving  rich  houses  only, 

-wlio  lisped  for  liis  wantonnesse, 

To  make  liis  Englisscli  swete  upon  his  tunge  ; 
His  eyen  twinkled  in  liis  hed  aright 
As  do  the  starres  in  the  frosty  night. 

AJid  among  them  all  goes,  with  mincing  step,  the 
middle-aged,  vulgar,  well-preserved,  coquettish, 
fihrewish  Wife  of  Bath  : 

Hir  hosea  weren  of  fyn  scarlet  reed, 

Ful  streyte  y-tied,  and  schoos  ful  moiste  and  newe, 

Bold  was  her  face,  and  faire  and  reed  of  hewe. 

^  And  so  —  on,  and  yet  on  —  for  the  twenty  or  more  ; 
all  touched  with  those  little,  life-like  strokes  which 
only  genius  can  command,  and  which  keep  -the 
breath  in  those  old  Pilgrims  to  Canterbury,  as  if  they 
travelled  there,  between  the  blooming  hedge  rows, 
on  every  sunshiny  day  of  every  succeeding  siDring. 

I  know  that  praise  of  these  and  of  the  way  Chau- 
cer marshals  them  at  the  Tabard,  and  starts  them 
on  their  way,  and  makes  them  tell  their  stories, 
is  like  praise  of  June  or  of  sunshine.  All  poets  and  all 
readers  have  spoken  it  ever  since  the  morning  they 
set  out  upon  theii-  joumeyings ;  and  many  an  Amer- 


CHAUCER.  117 

ican  voyager  of  our  day  has  found  best  illumination 
for  that  pleasant  jaunt  through  County  Kent  toward 
the  old  towers  of  Canterbury  in  his  recollections  of 
Chaucer's  Pilgrims.  It  is  true  that  the  poet's  way- 
side mai-ks  are  not  close  or  strong  ;  no  more  does  a 
meteor  leave  other  track  than  the  memory  of  its 
brightness.  We  cannot  fix  of  a  surety  upon  the 
"  ale-stake  "  where  the  Pardoner  did  "  by  ten  on  a 
cake,"  and  there  may  be  some  doubt  about  the 
"  litel "  town 

which  that  y-cleped  is,  Bob-up-and-Down. 

But  there  is  no  doubt  at  all  about  the  old  Wat- 
ling  Road  and  Deptford,  and  the  sight  of  Greenwich 
Heights,  which  must  have  shown  a  hfted  forest 
away  to  their  left ;  nor  about  Boughton  Hill 
(by  Boughton-under-Blean),  with  its  far-off  view 
of  sea-water  and  of  sails,  and  its  nearer  view 
of  the  great  cathedral  dominating  Canterbury 
town.  Up  to  the  year  1874  the  traveller  might 
have  found  a  Tabard  *  tavern  in  Southwark,  which 

*  The  name,  indeed,  by  some  strange  metonymy  not  easily 
explicable,  had  become  "Talbot."  There  is  a  later  "Tab- 
ard," dreadfully  new,  on  the  corner  of  "  Talbot  Inn  Yard," 
85  High  Street,  Borough. 


ii8  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

at  about  IGOO  had  replaced  the  old  inn  that  Chau- 
cer  knew ;  but  it  repeated  the  old  quaintness,  and 
with  its  lumbering  balconies  and  littered  court  and 
droll  signs,  and  its  saggings  and  slants  and  smells, 
carried  one  back  delightfully  to  fourteenth-century 
times.  And  in  Canterbm-y,  at  the  end  of  the  two 
or  three  days'  *  pilgrim  journey,  one  can  set  foot  in 
very  earnest  upon  the  pavement  these  people  from 
the  Tabard  trod,  under  the  cathedral  arches  —  look- 
ing after  the  tomb  of  the  great  Black  Prince,  and  the 
scene  of  the  slaughter  of  Thomas  a  Becket.  In  that 
quaint  old  town,  too,  are  gables  under  which  some 
of  these  story-tellers  of  the  Pilgrimage  may  have 
lodged ;  and  (mingHng  old  tales  with  new)  there  are 
latticed  casements  out  of  which  Agnes  Wickfield 
may  have  looked,  and  sidewalks  where  David  Cop- 
perfield  may  have  accommodated  his  boy-stej)  to 
the  lounging  pace  of  the  always  imminent  ]\Iicaw- 
ber.  Yet  it  is  in  the  country  outside  and  in  scenes 
the  poet  loved  best,  that  the  aroma  of  the  Canter- 
bury Tales  will  be  caught  most  surely  ;  and  it  is 

*  Dean  Stanley,  without  doubt  in  error,  in  measuring  the 
pilgrimage  by  twenty-four  hours.  See  Ihinj].  Pref.  to  Six 
Text  Edit.    Furnival. 


CHAUCER.  119 

among  tliose  picturesque  iindulations  of  laud  which 
lie  a  little  westwai'd  of  Harbledowu  —  upon  the 
Rochester  road,  which  wdnds  auiong  patches  of 
wood,  and  green  stretches  of  grass  and  billowy  hop- 
gardens, that  the  lover  of  Chaucer  will  have  most 
distinctly  in  his  ear  the  jingle  of  the  "  bridel "  of  the 
Monk,  and  in  his  eye  the  scarlet  hosen  and  the 
wimple  of  the  Wife  of  Bath. 

Yet  these  Canterbury  Tales  convey  something  in 
them  and  about  them  beside  delicacies ;  the  host, 
who  is  master  of  ceremonies,  throws  mud  at  a  griev- 
ous rate,  and  with  a  vigorous  and  a  dirty  hand. 
Boccaccio's  indecencies  lose  nothing  of  their  quality 
in  the  smirched  rhyme  of  the  Reeve's  tale  ;  *  the 
Miller  is  not  presentable  in  any  decent  company, 
and  the  Wife  of  Bath  is  vulgar  and  unseemly.  There 
are  others,  to  be  sure,  and  enough,  who  have  only 
gracious  and  grateful  speech  put  into  their  mouths  ; 
and  it  is  these  we  cherish.  The  stories,  indeed, 
which  these  pilgrims  tell,  are  not  much  in  them- 
selves ;  stolen,   too,  the  most  of  them  ;  stolen,  just 

*  Nov.  YI.  Oiorn.  IX.  It  may  be  open  to  question  if 
Chaucer  took  scent  from  this  trail,  or  from  some  as  mal- 
odorous Fr.  Fuhliau  —  as  Tyrwhitt  and  Wright  suggest. 
The  quest  is  not  a  savory  one. 


I20  LANDS,  LETTERS,   £-  KLYGS. 

as  Homer  stole  the  current  stories  about  Ajax  and 
Ulysses;  just  as  Boccaccio  stole  from  the  Gesta 
Romanorum;  just  as  Shakespeare  stole  from  the 
Cymric  fables  about  King  Lear  and  Cymbehne,  He 
stole  ;  but  so  did  everyone  who  could  get  hold  of  a 
good  manuscrii^t.  Imagine  —  if  all  books  were  in 
such  form  now,  and  MSS.  as  few  and  sj^arse  as  then, 
what  a  range  for  enterprising  authors  !  But  Chau- 
cer stole  nothing  that  he  did  not  improve  and  make 
his  own  by  the  beauties  he  added. 

Take  tliat  old  slight  legend  (everywhere  current 
in  the  north  of  England)  of  the  httle  Christian  boy, 
who  was  murdered  by  Jews,  because  he  sang  songs 
in  honor  of  the  Virgin  ;  and  who  —  after  death  — 
still  sang,  and  so  discovered  his  murderers.  It  is  a 
bare  rag  of  story,  with  only  streaks  of  blood-red  in 
it ;  yet  how  tenderly  touched,  and  how  pathetically 
told,  in  Chaucer's  tale  of  the  Prioress ! 

It  is  a  widow's  son  —  "  sevene  yeres  of  age  "  — 
and  wheresoe'er  he  saw  the  image 

Of  Christens  moder,  had  be  in  usage, 
As  him  was  taught,  to  knele  adown  and  say 
His  Ate  Marie  !  as  he  goth  by  the  way. 
Thus  hath  this  widowe  hire  litel  son  y-taught 
To  worship  aye,  and  he  forgat  it  naughte. 


CHAUCER.  121 

And  the  "litel"  fellow,  with  his  quick  ear,  hears  at 
school  some  day  the  Alma  Redemptoris  sung  ;  and 
he  asks  what  the  beautiful  song  may  mean  ?  He 
says  he  will  learn  it  before  Christmas,  that  he  may 
say  it  to  his  "moder  dere."  His  fellows  help  him 
word  by  word  —  line  by  line  —  till  he  gets  it  on  his 
tongue : 

From  word  to  word,  acording  with  the  note, 
Twies  a  day,  it  passed  thro'  his  throte. 

At  last  he  has  it  trippingly  ;  so  —  schoolward  and 

homeward, 

as  he  cam  to  and  fro 
Full  merrily  than  would  he  sing  and  crie, 
O  Alma  Redemptoris  ever  mo, 
The  sweetnesse  hath  his  herte  perced  so. 

Through  the  Jews'  quarter  he  goes  one  day,  sing- 
ing this  sweet  song  that  bubbles  from  him  as  he 
walks  ;  and  they  —  set  on  by  Satan,  who  "  hath  in 
Jewe's  herte  his  waspes  nest" — conspire  and  plot, 
and  lay  hold  on  him,  and  cut  his  throat,  and  cast 
him  into  a  j)it. 

But  —  a  wonder  —  a  miracle  !  —  still  from  the 
bleeding  throat,  even  when  life  is  gone,  comes  the 
tender   song,    "  0  Alma  Redemptoris ! "     And   the 


122  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &>  A'LYGS. 

wretched  mother,  -wandering  and  wailing,  is  led  by 
the  sweet,  plaintive  echoes,  whose  tones  she  knows, 
to  where  her  poor  boy  lies  dead  ;  and  even  as  she 
comes,  he,  Avith  throte  y-carven,  his 

Alma  Redemptoris  gan  to  sing 

So  loiide  that  al  the  place  gan  to  ring. 

Then  the  Christian  people  take  him  up,  and  bear 
him  away  to  the  Abbey.  His  mother  hes  swooning 
by  the  bier.  They  hang  those  \\Ticked  Jews  —  and 
prepare  the  little  body  for  burial  and  sprinkle  it 
with  holy  water  ;  but  still  from  the  poor  bleeding 
throat  comes  "  evermo'  "  the  song  : 

0  Alma  Redemptoris  mater! 

And  the  good  Abbot  entreats  him  to  say,  why  his 
soul  lingers,  with  his  throat  thus  all  agape  ? 

"  My  throte  is  cut  unto  my  nekke  bone," 
Saide  this  child,  "  and  as  by  way  of  kj-^nde, 
I  should  have  dyed,  ye  longe  time  agone, 
But  Jesu  Christ,  as  ye  in  bookes  finde, 
Wol  that  his  glory  laste,  and  be  in  minde, 
And  for  the  worship  of  his  moder  dere, 
Yet  may  I  sing,  '  0  Alma! '  loud  and  clere." 

But  he  says  that  as  he  received  his  death-blow,  the 
Virgin  came,  and 


CHAUCER.  123 

*'  Methoughte  she  leyde  a  grej'n  upon  my  tongue, 
Wherefore  I  singe  and  singe  ;  I  mote  certeyn 
Til  from  my  tonge  off-taken  is  the  greyn ; 
And  after  that,  thus  saide  she  to  me, 

'  My  litel  child,  then  wol  I  f ecch(  n  thee  ! '  " 
[Where  at]  This  holy  monk  — this  Abbot  —  him  mene  I, 
His  tonge  oiit-caughte,  and  tok  away  the  greyn, 
And  he  gaf  up  the  goost  full  softely. 


And  when  the  Abbot  had  this  wonder  sein 
His  salte  teres  trilled  adown  as  raine, 
And  graf  he  fell,  all  platt  upon  the  grounde, 
And  stille  he  lay  as  he  had  been  y-bounde. 

After  this  they  take  away  the  boy-martyr  from  off 
his  bier  — 

And  in  a  tombe  of  marble  stones  clere 
Enclosen  they  his  litel  body  swete  ; 
Ther  he  is  now :  God  leve  us  for  to  mete  ! 

How  tenderly  the  words  all  match  to  the  delicate 
meaning !  This  delightful  poet  knows  every  finest 
resource  of  language  :  he  subdues  and  trails  after 
him  all  its  harmonies.  No  grimalkin  stretching  out 
Bilken  paws  touches  so  Ughtly  what  he  wants  only 
to  touch  ;  no  cat  with  sharpest  claws  clings  so  tena- 
ciously to  what  he  would  grip  with  his  eamester 
words.  He  is  a  painter  whose  technique  is  never  at 
fault  —  whose  art  is  an  instinct. 


124  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &>  KINGS. 

Yet  —  it  must  be  said  —  there  is  no  grand  horizon 
at  the  back  of  his  pictures  :  i)leasant  May-mornings 
and  green  meadows  a  plenty ;  pathetic  episodes, 
most  beguiling  tracery  of  incidents  and  of  character, 
but  never  strong,  passionate  outbursts  showing  pro- 
found capacity  for  measurement  of  deepest  emotion. 
We  cannot  think  of  him  as  telling  with  any  ade- 
quate force  the  stor}-  of  King  Lear,  in  his  dehrium 
of  wrath :  Macbeth's  stride  and  hushed  madness 
and  bated  breath  could  not  come  into  the  charm- 
ing, mellifluous  rhythm  of  Chaucer's  most  tragic 
story  without  making  a  dissonance  that  would  be 
screaming. 

But  his  descriptions  of  all  country  things  are  gar- 
den-sweet. He  touches  the  daisies  and  the  roses 
with  tints  that  keep  them  always  in  freshest,  virgin, 
dewj'  bloom  ;  and  he  fetches  the  forest  to  our  eye 
with  words  that  are  brim-full  of  the  odors  of  the 
woods  and  of  the  waving  of  green  boughs. 


In  our  next  talk  we  shall  speak  of  some  "O'ho  sang 
beside  him,  and  of  some  who  followed  ;  but  of  these 
not  one  had  so  rare  a  language,  and  not  one  had 
so  true  an  eye. 


CHAPTEK  IV. 

IN  our  last  chapter  we  went  back  to  the  latter 
edge  of  the  thirteenth  centary  and  to  the  City 
of  Oxford,  that  we  might  find  in  that  time  and  place 
a  Franciscan  Friar  —  known  as  Roger  Bacon,  who 
had  an  independence  of  spirit  which  brought  him 
into  difficulties,  and  a  searchingness  of  mind  which 
made  people  count  him  a  magician.  I  spoke  of 
Langlande  and  Wyclif :  and  of  how  the  reforming 
spirit  of  the  first  expressed  itself  in  the  alliterative 
rhythm  of  the  Piers  Plowman  allegory  ;  and  how 
the  latter  declai-ed  against  Papal  tyranny  and  the 
accepted  dogmas  of  the  Church  :  he  too,  set  on  foot 
those  companies  of  "pore  jDriests,"  who  in  long  rus- 
set gowns  reaching  to  their  heels,  and  with  staff  in 
hand,  traversed  the  highways  and  byways  of  Eng- 
land, preaching  humility  and  charity  ;  he  gave  to 
us  moreover  that  Scriptural  quaintness  of  language, 


126  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KLNGS. 

which  from  Wyclif's  lime,  down  to  ours,  lias  left 
its  triiil  in  every  English  pulpit,  and  colored  every 
English  prayer. 

Then  we  came  to  that  great  poet  Chaucer,  who 
wrote  so  much  and  so  well,  as  —  first  and  most  of 
all  contemporary  or  preceding  writers  —  to  make 
one  proud  of  the  new  English  tongue.  He  died  in 
1400,  and  was  buried  at  Westminster  —  not  a  stone's 
throw  away  from  the  site  of  his  last  London  home. 
His  tomb,  under  its  Gothic  screen,  may  be  found  in 
the  Poet's  Corner  of  the  Abbey,  a  little  to  the  right, 
on  entering  from  the  Old  Palace  Yard  ;  and  over  it, 
in  a  window  that  looks  toward  the  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment, has  been  set  —  in  these  latter  years,  in  unfad- 
ing array  —  the  gay  company  of  Chaucer's  Canter- 
bury Pilgrims, 

In  the  same  year  in  which  the  poet  died,  died 
also  that  handsome  and  unfortunate  Richard  the 
Second  *  (son  of  the  Black  Prince)  who  promised 
bravely  ;  who  seemed  almost  an  heroic  figure  when 
in  his  young  days,  he  confronted  Wat  Tyler  so 
coolly  ;  but  he  made  promises  he  could  not  or  would 

*  His  dethronement  preceded  liis  death,  by  a  twelvemontli 
or  more. 


JOHN   GOWEK.  127 

not  kf>op  —  sUppod  into  tlio  rTifliralmnnt  of  royalU(!H 
against  which  Lollard  and  d(!moomtio  malcontents 
bayed  in  vain :  there  were  court  cabals  that  over- 
set him  ;  Shakespeare  has  told  his  story,  and  in  that 
tragedy  —  lightciil  witli  brilliant  passages  —  John  of 
Gaunt,  brother  to  the  Black  Prince,  appears,  old, 
and  gray  and  near  his  grave;  and  liis  son  ilie 
crafty  but  resolute  Henry  Bolingbroko  —  (rom(is  on 
the  stage  as  Henry  IV,  to  take  the  "brittle  glory" 
of  the  crown. 

Of  (jfomer  and  Fro'huart. 

But  I  must  not  leave  Chaucer's  imm.ediate  times, 
without  speaking  of  oilier  men  wlio  belonged  there: 
the  first  is  John  Govver  —  a  poet  wliom  I  nainc  from 
a  sense  of  duty  ratlier  thaji  from  any  Kpecijil  liking 
for  what  he  wrote.  He  was  a  man  of  learning  for 
tliose  days  —  having  a  good  estate  too,  and  living  in 
an  orderly  Kentish  home,  to  which  he  went  buck 
and  forth  in  an  eight-oared  barge  upon  the  Thames. 
He  wrote  a  long  Latin  poem  Vox  (HamanllH,  in 
which  like  Langlande  he  declaimed  against  the 
vices  and  pi'etensions  of  tlie  clergy  ;  and  he  also 
treated   in  the    high-toned   conservative    way   of   a 


128  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KINGS. 

well-to-do  country  gentleman,  the  social  troubles  of 
the  time,  which  had  broken  out  into  Wat  Tyler  and 
Jack  Straw  rebellions ;  —  people  should  be  wise  and 
discreet  and  religious  ;  then,  such  troubles  would 
not  come. 

A  better  known  poem  of  Gower  —  because  written 
in  English  —  was  the  Confessio  Amantis:  Old  Classic, 
and  Eomance  tales  come  into  it,  and  are  fearfully 
stretched  out ;  and  there  are  pedagogic  Latin  rubrics 
at  the  margin,  and  wearisome  repetitions,  with  now 
and  then  faint  scent  of  prettinesses  stolen  from 
French,  fabliaux :  but  unless  your  patience  is  heroic, 
you  will  grow  tired  of  him  ;  and  the  monotonous, 
measured,  metallic  jingle  of  his  best  verse  is  pro- 
vokingly  like  the  "  Caw-caw "  of  the  prim,  black 
raven.  He  had  art,  he  had  learning,  he  had  good- 
will ;  but  he  could  not  weave  words  into  the  thrush- 
like melodies  of  Chaucer.  Even  the  clear  and 
beautiful  tyi^e  of  the  Bell  &  Daldy  edition  *  does 
not  make  him  entertaining.     You  will  tire  before 

*  Edited  by  Dr.  Reinhold  Pauli  ■  London,  1857.  Henry 
Morley  {Eng.  Writers,  IV.,  p.  238)  enumerates  a  score  or 
more  of  existing  MSS.  of  the  poem.  The  first  printed  edi- 
tion was  that  of  Caxton,  1483. 


FROISSART.  129 

you  are  half  through  the  Prologue,  which  is  as  long, 
and  stiff  as  many  a  sermon.  And  if  you  skip  to 
the  stories,  they  will  not  ^Yin  you  to  liveliness :  Pau- 
line's grace,  and  mishaps  are  dull ;  and  the  sharp, 
tragic  twang  about  Gurmunde's  skull,  and  the  ven- 
geance of  Rosemunde  (from  the  old  legend  which 
Paul  the  Deacon  tells)  does  not  w\ake  one's  blood. 

In  his  later  years  he  was  religiously  inclined  ; 
was  a  patron  and,  for  a  time,  resident  of  the  Priory 
which  was  attached  to  the  church,  now  known  as 
St.  Savioui-'s,  and  standing  opposite  to  the  Lon- 
don Bridge  Station  in  Southwark.  In  that  church 
may  now  be  found  the  tomb  of  Gower  and  his 
effigy  in  stone,  with  his  head  resting  on  "  the  like- 
ness of  three  books  which  he  compiled." 

Perhaps  I  have  no  right  to  speak  of  Froissart, 
because  he  was  a  Fleming,  and  did  not  write  in 
English  ;  but  Lord  Berners'  spirited  translation  of 
his  Chronicle  (1523)  has  made  it  an  English 
classic  :  *  moreover,  Froissart  was  very  much  in 
London  ;  he  was  a  great  pet  of  the  Queen  of  Ed- 

*  A  more  modern  and  accepted  translation  —  by  a  wealthy 
Welsh  gentleman,  Thos.  Johnes  —  was  luxuriously  printed 
on  his  private  press  at  Hafod,  Cardigausliire,  in  1803. 
9 


I30  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &^  A'LVGS. 

ward  III.  ;  he  had  free  range  of  the  palace  ;  he 
described  great  fetes  that  were  given  at  Windsor, 
and  tournaments  on  what  is  now  Cheapside  ;  a 
reporter  of  our  day  could  not  have  described  these 
things  better :  he  went  into  Scotland  too  —  the 
Queen  Philippa  giving  him  his  outfit  —  and  stayed 
with  the  brave  Douglas  "  much  time,"  and  tells  us 
of  Stirling  and  of  Melrose  Abbey.  Indeed,  he  was 
a  great  traveller.  He  was  at  Milan  when  Prince 
Clarence  of  England  married  one  of  the  great 
Visconti  (Chaucer  possibly  there  also,  and  Petrarch 
of  a  certainty)  ;  he  was  at  Rome,  at  Florence, 
at  Bordeaux  with  the  Black  Prince,  Avhen  his  son 
Richard  11.  was  born ;  was  long  in  the  household  of 
Gaston  de  Foix  :  we  are  inclined  to  forget,  as  we 
read  him,  that  he  was  a  priest,  and  had  his  paro- 
chial charge  somewhere  along  the  low  banks  of  the 
Scheldt :  in  fact,  we  suspect  that  he  forgot  it  him- 
self. 

He  not  only  wrote  Chronicles,  but  poems  ;  and 
he  tells  us,  that  on  his  last  visit  to  England,  he  pre- 
sented a  copy  of  these  latter  —  beautifully  illumin- 
ated, engrossed  by  his  own  hand,  bound  in  crimson 
velvet,  and  embellished  with  silver  clasps,  bosses, 


FROISSART. 


131 


and  golden  roses  —  to  King  Richard  II.  ;  and  the 
King  asked  him  what  it  was  all  about ;  and  he  said 

—  "  About  Love ;"  whereat,  he  says,  the  King  seem- 
ed much  pleased,  and  dipped  into  it,  here  and  there 

—  for  "he  could  read  French  as  well  as  speak  it." 
Altogether,  this  rambling,  and  popular  Froissart 

was,  in  mauy  points,  what  we  should  call  an  exqui- 
site fellow ;  knowing,  and  liking  to  know,  only 
knights  and  nobles,  and  flattering  them  to  the  full ; 
receiving  kindly  invitations  wherever  he  went ; 
overcome  with  the  pressure  of  his  engagements ; 
going  about  in  the  latest  fashion  of  doublet ;  some- 
whiles  leading  a  fine  greyhound  in  leash,  and  pre- 
senting five  or  six  of  the  same  to  his  friend  the 
Comte  de  Foix  (who  had  a  great  love  for  dogs) ; 
never  going  near  enough  to  the  front  in  battle  to 
get  any  very  hard  raps  ;  ready  with  a  song  or  a 
story  always ;  pulling  a  long  bow  with  infinite 
grace.  Well  —  the  pretty  poems  he  thought  so  much 
of,  nobody  knows  —  nobody  cares  for :  they  have 
never,  I  think,  been  published  in  their  entirety :  * 
But,  his  Journal  —  his  notes  of  what  he  saw  and 

*  There  is  a  manuscript  copy  in  the  (so  called)  BiUiotheqxie 
du  Roi  at  Paris.     A  certain  number  —  among  them,  tlie  Espi- 


132  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KINGS. 

heard,  clapped  down  night  by  night,  in  hosteh-ies 
or  in  tent  —  perhaps  on  horseback  —  are  cherished 
of  all  men,  and  must  bo  reckoned  the  liveliest,  if 
not  the  best  of  all  chronicles  of  his  time.  He  died 
in  the  first  decade  of  that  fifteenth  century  on 
■which  we  open  our  British  march  to-day  ;  and,  at 
the  outset,  I  call  attention  to  a  little  nest  of  dates, 
which  from  their  lying  so  close  together,  can  be 
easily  kept  in  mind.  Richard  11.  son  of  the  Black 
Prince,  died — a  disgraced  prisoner —  in  1400.  John 
of  Gaunt,  his  uncle,  friend  of  Chaucer,  died  the 
previous  year  :  while  Chaucer,  Froissart  and  John 
Gower  all  died  in  less  than  ten  years  thereafter ; 
thus,  the  century  opens  with  a  group  of  great 
deaths. 

Two  Henrys  and  Two  Poets. 

That  Henry  IV.  who  appears  now  upon  the 
throne,  and  who  was  not  a  very  noticeable  man, 
save  for  his  kingship,  you  will  remember  as  the 
little  son  of  John  of  Gaunt,  who  played  about 
Chaucer's  knee  ;    you  will  remember   him   further 

nette  Amoureuse  —  appear  iu  the  Buchon  edition  of  the 
Chroniques  ;  Paris,  1835. 


HENRY   V.  133 

as  giving  title  to  a  pair  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  in 
which  appears  for  the  first  time  that  semi-historic 
character  —  that  enormous  wallet  of  flesh,  that  ecTe- 
gious  villain,  that  man  of  a  prodigious  humor,  all  in 
one  —  Jack  Falstaff.  And  this  famous,  fat  Knight 
of  Literature  shall  introduce  us  to  Prince  Hal  who, 
according  to  traditions  (much  doubted  nowadays), 
was  a  wild  boy  in  his  youth,  and  boon  companion  of 
such  as  Falstaff ;  but,  afterward,  became  the  brave 
and  cruel,  but  steady  and  magnificent  Henry  V. 
Yet  we  shall  never  forget  those  early  days  of  his, 
when  at  Gad's  Hill,  he  plots  with  Falstaff  and  his 
fellows,  to  waylay  ti-avellers  bound  to  London,  with 
plump  purses.  Before  the  plot  is  carried  out,  the 
Prince  agrees  privately  with  Poins  (one  of  the 
rogues)  to  put  a  trick  upon  Falstaff:  Poins  and  the 
Prince  will  slip  away  in  the  dusk  —  let  Falstaff  and 
his  companions  do  the  robbing;  then,  suddenly  — 
disguised  in  buckram  suits  —  pounce  on  them  and 
seize  the  booty.  This,  the  Prince  and  Poins  do  : 
and  at  the  first  onset  of  these  latter,  the  fat  Knight 
runs  off,  as  fast  as  his  great  hulk  will  let  him,  and 
goes  spluttering  and  pufiing  to  a  near  tavern,  where 
—  after  consuming  "  an  intolerable  deal  of  sack  "-— 


134  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &-   AVXGS. 

he  is  confronted  by  the  Prince,  who  demands  his 
share  of  the  spoils.  But  the  big  Knight  bkirts  out  — 
"A  plague  on  all  cowards ! "  He  has  been  beset,  while 
the  Prince  had  sneaked  away  ;  the  spoils  are  gone  : 

"  I  am  a  rogue,  if  I  was  not  at  half  a  sword  with  a  dozen 
of  them  two  hours  together  ;  I  have  scaped  by  a  miracle  ;  I 
am  eight  times  thrust  thro' the  doublet  —  four  thro' the  hose. 
My  sword  is  hacked  like  a  hand-saw.  If  I  fought  not  with 
fifty  of  ^them,  then  am  I  a  bunch  of  radish.  If  there  were 
not  two  or  three  and  fifty  on  poor  old  Jack,  then  am  I  no 
two-legged  creature." 

"  Pray  God,  [says  the  Prince,  keeping  down  his  laughter] 
you  have  not  murdered  some  of  them  !  '' 

Fahtaff.  Nay,  that's  past  praying  for  ;  for  I  peppered 
two  of  them  —  two  rogues  in  buckram.  Here  I  lay,  and  thus 
I  bore  my  sword.     Four  rogues  in  buckram  let  drive  at  me. 

Prince.     What,  four  ?  ;  thou  said'st  two. 

Falstaff.     Four,  Hal  ;  I  told  thee  four. 

And  Poins  comes  to  his  aid,  with  —  "Ay,  he  said 
four."  Whereat  the  fat  Knight  takes  courage  ;  the 
men  in  buckram  growing,  in  whimsical  stretch  to 
seven,  and  nine  ;  he,  paltering  and  swearing,  and 
never  losing  his  delicious  insolent  swagger,  till  at 
last  the  Prince  declares  the  truth,  and  makes  show 
of  the  booty.  You  think  this  coward  Falstaff  may 
lose  heart  at  this  ;  not  a  whit  of  it ;  his  eye,  roll- 


LYDGATE.  135 

ing  in  fat,  does  not  blink  even,  while  the  Prince 
unravels  the  story ;  but  at  the  end  the  stout  Knight 
hitches  uj^  his  waistband,  smacks  his  lips  : — 

"  D'ye  think  I  did  not  know  ye,  my  masters  ?  Should  I 
turn  upon  the  true  Prince  ?  Why  thou  knowest  I  am  as 
valiant  as  Hercules  ;  but  beware  instinct :  I  was  a  coward  on 
instinct." 

So  runs  the  Shakespearean  scene,  of  which  I  give 
this  glimpse  only  as  a  remembrancer  of  Henry  IV., 
and  his  possibly  wayward  son. 

If  we  keep  by  the  strict  letter  of  history,  there  is 
little  of  literary  interest  in  that  short  reign  of  his 
—  only  fourteen  years,  Occleve,  a  poet  of  whom 
I  spoke  as  having  painted  a  portrait  of  Chaucer 
(which  I  tried  to  describe  to  you)  is  worth  men- 
tioning—  were  it  only  for  this.  Lydgate,*  of  about 
the  same  date,  was  a  more  fertile  poet  ;  wrote  so 
easily  indeed,  that  he  was  tempted  to  write  too 
much.  But  he  had  the  art  of  choosing  taking  sub- 
jects, and  so,  was  vastly  popular.  He  had  excellent 
training,  both  English  and  Continental ;  he  was  a 
priest,  though  sometimes  a  naughty  one  ;  and  he 
opened  a  school  at  his  monastery  of  St.  Edmunds. 

*  John  Lydgate  :  dates  of  birth  and  death  unsettled. 


136  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &-  KLYCS. 

A  few  fragments  of  that  monastery  are  still  to  be 
seen  in  the  ancient  town  of  Bury  St.  Edmunds  :  —  a 
town  you  may  remember  in  a  profane  way,  as  the 
scene  of  certain  nocturnal  adventures  that  befel,  in 
our  time,  IMr.  Pickwick  and  Sam  Weller. 

Notable  amongst  the  minor  poems  of  this  old 
Bury  monk,  is  a  jingling  ballad  called  London 
Lickpenny,  in  which  a  poor  suitor  pushing  his  way 
into  London  courts,  is  hustled  about,  has  his  hood 
stolen,  wanders  hither  and  yon,  with  stout  cries  of 
"  ripe  strawberries  "  and  "  hot  sheepes  feete  "  shrill- 
ing in  his  ears  ;  is  beset  by  taverners  and  thievish 
thread-sellers,  and  is  glad  to  get  himself  away  again 
into  Kent,  and  there  digest  the  broad,  and  ever 
good  moral  that  a  man's  pennies  get  "licked"  out 
of  him  fast  in  London.  Remembering  that  this 
was  at  the  very  epoch  when  Nym  and  Bardolph  fre- 
quented the  Boar's  Head,  Eastcheap,  and  cracked 
jokes  and  oaths  with  Dame  Quickly  and  Doll  Tear- 
sheet,  and  we  are  more  grateful  for  the  old  rln'ming 
priest's  realistic  bit  of  London  sights,  than  for  all 
his  classics,*  or  all  his  stories  of  the  saints. 


*  7%e  Storie  qf  Thebe  and  tJie  Troy  booTce  were  among  his 
ambitious  works.     Skeat  gives  liis  epocli  "  about  1420,"  and 


PRINCE    JAMES.  T37 

But  at  the  very  time  this  Lydgate  was  writing,  a 
tenderer  and  sweeter  voice  was  warbling  music  out 
of  a  prison  window  at  Windsor  ;  and  tbe  music  lias 
come  down  to  us  :  * 

"Beauty  enough  to  make  a  world  to  doat, 
And  when  she  walked  had  a  little  thraw 
Under  the  sweet  grene  bowis  bent, 
Her  fair  freshe  face,  as  white  as  any  snaw 
She  turned  has,  and  forth  her  way  is  went ; 
But  then  begun  my  aches  and  torment 
To  see  her  part,  and  follow  I  na  might ; 
Methought  the  day  was  turned  into  night." 

There  is  a  royal  touch  in  that,  and  it  comes  from 
a  royal  hand  —  that  of  Prince  James  of  Scotland, 
who,  taken  prisoner  by  Henry  IV.,  was  held  fast  for 
sixteen  years  in  the  keep  of  Windsor  Castle.     Mr. 

cites  London  Lickpenny  —  copying  from  the  Harleian  MS. 
(367)  in  the  British  Museum. 

*  James  I.  (of  Scotland),  b.  1394  and  was  murdered  1437. 

The  King^s  Quair,  from  which  quotation  is  made,  was 
written  in  1423.  It  is  a  poem  of  nearly  1400  lines,  of  which 
only  one  MS.  exists  —  in  the  Bodleian  Library. 

An  edition  by  Chalmers  (1824)  embodies  many  errors  : 
the  only  trustworthy  reading  is  that  edited  by  the  Rev. 
Walter  Skeat  for  the  Scottish  Text  Soc.  (1883-4).  A  cer- 
tain vwdernizing  belongs  of  course  to  the  citation  I  make  — 
as  well  as  to  many  others  I  have  made  and  shall  make. 


138  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &-  KIXGS. 

Irving  has  m.ade  him  the  subject  of  a  very  pleasant- 
paper  in  the  Sketch-book.  Though  a  prince,  he 
was  a  poet  by  nature,  and  from  the  window  of  his 
prison  did  see  the  fair  lady  whose  graces  were  gar- 
nered in  the  verse  I  have  cited  ;  and  oddly  enough, 
he  did  come  to  marry  the  subject  of  this  very  poem 
(who  was  related  to  the  royal  house  of  England, 
being  grand-daughter  of  John  of  Gaunt)  and  there- 
after did  come  to  be  King  of  Scotland  and  —  what 
was  a  commoner  fate  —  to  be  assassinated.  That 
queen  of  his,  of  whom  the  wooing  had  been  so  ro- 
mantic and  left  its  record  in  the  King's  Quair'  — 
made  a  tender  and  devoted  wife  —  threw  hei'self  at 
last  between  him  and  the  assassins  —  receiving  griev- 
ous wounds  thereby,  but  all  vainly  —  and  the  poor 
poet-king  was  murdered  in  her  presence  at  Perth, 
in  the  year  1437. 

These  three  poets  I  have  named  all  plumed  their 
wings  to  make  that  great  flight  by  which  Chaucer 
had  swept  into  the  Empyrean  of  Song  :  but  not  one 
of  them  was  equal  to  it :  nor,  thenceforward  all 
down  through  the  century,  did  any  man  sing  as 
Chaucer  had  sung.  There  were  poetasters  ;  there 
were  rhyming  chroniclers  ;  and  toward  the  end  of 


JOHN  SKELTON.  139 

the  century  there  appeared  a  poet  of  more  preten- 
sion, but  with  few  of  tlie  graces  we  find  in  the  au- 
thor of  the  Canterbury  Tales. 

John  Skelton  *  was  his  name  :  he  too  a  priest  liv- 
ing in  Norfolk.  His  rhymes,  as  he  tells  us  himself, 
were  "ragged  and  jagged:"  but  worse  than  this, 
they  were  often  ribald  and  rabid  —  attacking  with 
fierceness  Cardinal  Wolsey  —  attacking  his  fellow- 
priests  too  —  so  that  he  was  compelled  to  leave  his 
living :  but  he  somehow  won  a  place  afterward  in  the 
royal  household  as  tutor  ;  and  even  the  great  Eras- 
mus (who  had  come  over  from  the  Low  Countries, 
and  was  one  while  teaching  Greek  at  Cambridge) 
congratulates  some  prince  of  the  royal  family  upon 
the  great  advantage  they  have  in  the  services  of  such 
a  "special  light  and  ornament  of  British  literature." 
He  is  capricious,  homely,  never  weak,  often  coarse, 
always  quaint.  From  out  his  curious  trick-track  of 
verse,  I  pluck  this  little  musical  canzonet :  — 

"  Merry  Margaret 
As  midsummer  flower  ; 


*  Priest  at  Diss  in  Norfolk,  b.  (about)  1460 ;  d.  1529.    Best 
edition  of  works  edited  by  Rev.  A.  Dyce.   1843. 


I40  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &-  KINGS. 

Gentle  as  falcon 

Or  hawk  of  the  tower : 

With  solace  and  gladness 

Much  raiith  and  no  madness, 

All  good  and  nu  badness, 

So  joyously, 

So  maidenly, 

So  womanly 

Her  demeaning 

In  everything 

Far,  far  passing 

That  I  can  indite 

Or  suffice. to  write 

Of  merry  Margaret 

As  midsummer  flower 

Gentle  as  falcon 

Or  hawk  of  the  tower : 

Stedfast  of  thought 

Well-made  well  wrought ; 

Far  may  be  sought 

Ere  you  can  find 

So  courteous  —  so  kind 

As  merry  Margaret 

This  midsummer  flower." 

There  is  a  pretty  poetic  perfume  in  this  —  a  merry 
musical  jingle  ;  but  it  gives  no  echo  even  of  the 
tendernesses  which  wrapped  all  round  and  round 
the  story  of  the  Sad  Griselda. 


HENRY   V.  141 

Henry   V.  and  Wa?'  Times. 

This  fifteenth  century  —  in  no  cliink  of  which,  as 
wonld  seem,  could  any  brave  or  sweet  English  poem 
find  root-hold,  was  not  a  bald  one  in  British  annals. 
There  were  great  men  of  war  in  it :  Henry  V.  and 
Bedford  *  and  Warwick  and  Talbot  and  Richard 
III.  all  wrote  bloody  legends  with  their  swords 
across  French  plains,  or  across  English  meadows. 

Normandy,  which  had  slipped  out  of  British 
hands  —  as  you  remember  —  under  King  John,  was 
won  again  by  the  masterly  blows  Henry  V.  struck 
at  Agincourt  and  otherwheres.  Shakespeare  has 
given  an  historic  picture  of  this  campaign,  which 
will  be  ajDt  to  outlive  any  contemporary  chronicle. 
Ealstaff  disappears  from  sight,  and  his  old  crony 
the  dissolute  Prince  Hal  comes  upon  the  scene  as 
the  conquering  and  steady-going  King. 

Through  all  the  drama  —  from  the  "proud  hoofs" 

*  Bedford  (when  Eegent  of  France)  is  supposed  to  have 
transported  to  England  the  famous  Louvre  Library  of  Charles 
V.  (of  France).  There  were  910  vols.,  according  to  the  cata- 
logue drawn  up  by  Gilles  Mallet  —  "the  greater  number 
written  on  fine  vellum  and  magnificently  hound." 


142  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &-  A'LVGS. 

of  the  war-liorses,  prancing  in  tlie  prologue,  to  the 
last  chorus,  the  lurid  bhize  of  battle  is  threaten- 
ing or  shining.  Never  were  the  pomp  and  circum- 
stance of  war  so  contained  within  the  pages  of  a 
play.  For  ever  so  little  space  —  in  gaps  of  the  read- 
ing—  between  the  vulgar  wit  of  Njm,  and  the 
Welsh  jargon  of  Fluellen,  you  hear  the  crack  of  ar- 
tillery, and  see  shivered  spears  and  tossing  plumes. 
In  the  mid  scenes,  vast  ranks  of  men  sweep  under 
your  vision,  and  crash  against  opposing  ranks,  and 
break,  and  dissolve  away  in  the  hot  swirl  of  battle. 
And  by  way  of  artistic  contrast  to  all  this,  comes  at 
last,  in  the  closing  pages,  that  piquant,  homely, 
strange  coquettish  love-scene,  which  —  historically 
true  in  its  main  details — joined  the  fortunes  of  Eng- 
land and  of  France  in  the  persons  of  King  Henry 
and  Katharine  of  Valois.  You  will  not  be  sorry  to 
have  a  glimpse  of  this  Shakespearean  and  historic 
love-making  :  The  decisive  battle  has  been  fought : 
the  French  King  is  prisoner  :  Henry  has  the  game 
in  his  own  hands.  It  is  a  condition  of  jDeace  that 
he  and  the  fair  Katharine  —  daughter  of  France  — 
shall  join  hands  in  marriage  ;  and  Henry  in  his 
blunt  war  wav  sets  about  his  wooin"; ;  — 


HENRY  V.  143 

"  0  fair  Katharine,  if  you  will  love  me  soundly  with  your 
French  heart,  I  will  be  glad  to  hear  you  confess  it  brokenly 
with  your  English  tongue.     Do  you  like  me,  Kate  ?  " 

Kate.     Pardonnez  moi ;  I  cannot  tell  vat  is  —  like  me. 

King.  [Explosively  and  deliciously.]  An  angel  is  like 
you,  Kate  ;  and  you  are  like  an  angel :  faith,  I'm  glad  thou 
can'st  speak  no  better  English  :  for  if  thou  could' st  thou 
would'st  find  me  such  a  plain  King,  that  thou  would'st  think 
I  had  sold  my  farm  to  buy  my  crown.  If  you  would  put 
me  to  verses,  or  to  dance  for  your  sake,  Kate,  why  you  un- 
did me.  I  speak  plain  soldier.  If  thou  can'st  love  me  for 
this  —  take  me:  if  not  —  to  say  to  thee  that  I  shall  die,  is 
true  :  but  — for  thy  love  — by  the  Lord,  no.  Yet  I  love  thee 
too.  And  whil'st  thou  livest,  Kate,  take  a  fellow  of  a  plain 
uncoined  constancy  :  a  straight-back  will  stoop  ;  but  a  good 
heart,  Kate,  is  the  sun  and  the  moon  ;  or  rather  the  sun  and 
not  the  moon,  for  it  shines  bright  and  never  changes.  If 
thou  would'st  have  such  a  one,  take  me  ! 

Kate.  Is  it  possible  dat  I  shoiild  love  de  enemy  of 
France  ? 

King.  No,  it's  not  possible,  Kate  :  but  in  loving  me  yow 
would  love  the  friend  of  France,  for  I  love  France  so  well, 
that  I  will  not  part  with  a  village  of  it :  I  will  have  it  all 
mine :  and,  Kate,  when  France  is  mine,  and  I  am  yours,  then 
yours  is  France  and  you  are  mine.  But,  Kate,  dost  thou 
understand  thus  much  English  —  Can'st  thou  love  me  ? 

Kate.     I  cannot  tell. 

King.     Can  any  of  your  neighbors  tell,  Kate  ? 

Kate.     I  do  not  know  dat. 

King.  By  mine  honor,  in  true  English,  I  love  thee, 
Kate  :  by  which  honor,  I  dare  not  swear  thou  lovest  me : 


144  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &-  AVA'GS. 

j-et  m}'  blood  begins  to  flatter  me,  that  thou  dost.  Wilt  thou 
liave  me  Kate  '? 

Kate.     That  is  as  it  shall  please  le  roy  vion  Pere. 

King.  Nay  it  will  please  him  well,  Kate.  It  sTiaU  please 
him,  Kate,  and  upon  that,  I  kiss  your  hand  and  call  you 
"my  Queen." 

Kate.  Dat  is  not  de  fashion  2'>our  les  ladies  of  France  — 
to  kiss  before  marriage. 

King.  O  Kate,  [loftily]  nice  customs  courtesy  to  great 
Kings:  —  here  comes  your  father. 

And  these  two  did  marry ;  the  Queen  being  —  as 
Shakespeare  represents  —  in  a  large  sense,  the  spoil 
of  war.  Out  of  this  union  sprung  the  next  King, 
Henry  \1.,  crowned  when  an  infant.  But  this  does 
not  close  the  story  of  Katharine  :  three  yeai's  after 
the  King's  death,  she  married  a  Welsh  knight  — 
named  Sir  Owen  Tudor.  (He,  poor  man,  lost  his 
head,  some  years  after,  for  his  temerity  in  man-y- 
ing  a  King's  widow.)  But  from  the  second  mar- 
riage of  Katharine,  was  born  a  son  who  became 
the  father  of  that  Henry  VII.,  who  sixty  years  later 
conquered  Richard  HI.  on  Bosworth  field  —  brought 
to  an  end  the  wars  of  York  and  Lancaster,  and  gave 
his  own  surname  of  Tudor  to  his  son  Henr}^  VHL, 
to  the  great  Elizabeth  and  to  bloody  Mary. 

Seeing   thus    how    the    name   of    Tudor    came 


JVAR    OF   THE  ROSES.  145 

into  the  royal  family,  through  that  Katharine  of 
Valois,  whose  courtship  is  written  in  the  play  of 
Henry  V.,  I  will  tiy  on  the  same  page  to  fasten  in 
mind  the  cause  of  the  great  civil  wars  of  York  and 
Lancaster,  or  of  the  white  and  red  roses,  which 
desolated  England  in  the  heart  of  the  fifteenth 
century.* 

You  will  recall  my  having  spoken  of  Chaucer  as 
a  favorite  in  the  household  of  John  of  Gaunt,  and 
as  an  inmate  also  in  the  household  of  John's  older 
brother,  Lionel.  You  will  remember,  too,  that 
Henry  IV.,  son  of  John  of  Gaunt,  succeeded  the  hap- 
less and  handsome  Eichard  H.  on  the  throne  ;  but 
his  right  was  disputed,  and  with  a  great  deal  of 
reason,  by  the  heirs  of  the  older  brother,  Lionel 
(who  had  title  of  Duke  of  Clarence).  There  was 
not  however  power  and  courage  enough  to  contest 
the  claim,  until  the  kingship  of  young  Henry  VL 
—  crowned  when  an  infant  —  offered  opportunity. 
Thereafter  and  thereby  came  the  broils,  the  appre- 
hensions, the  doubts,  the  cons2:)iracies,  the  battles, 
which  made  England  one  of  the  worst  of  places  to 


*  1455  to  1485. 
10 


146  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  A'/A^GS. 

live  in  :  all  this  bitterness  between  York  and  Lan- 
caster growing  out  of  the  rival  claims  of  the  heirs 
of  our  old  acquaintances  Lionel  and  John  of  Gaunt, 
whom  we  met  in  the  days  of  Chaucer. 

Joan  of  Arc  and  liichard  III. 

If  we  look  for  any  literary  illumination  of  this 
period,  we  shall  scarce  find  it,  except  we  go  again 
to  the  historic  plays  of  Shakespeare  :  The  career  of 
Henry  VI.  supplies  to  him  the  ground-work  for 
three  dramas :  the  first,  dealing  with  the  English 
armies  in  France,  which,  after  Henry  V.'s  death  are 
beaten  back  and  forth  by  French  forces,  waked 
to  new  bravery  under  the  strange  enthusiasm  and 
heroic  leadership  of  Joan  of  Arc.  Of  course  she 
comes  in  for  her  picture  in  Shakespeare's  story :  but 
he  gives  us  an  ignoble  one  (though  not  so  bad  as 
Voltaire's  in  the  ribald  poem  of  La  Pacelle). 

No  Englishman  of  that  day,  or  of  Shakespeare's 
day,  could  do  justice  to  the  fiery,  Gallic  courage, 
the  self-devotion,  the  religious  ennoblement  of  that 
earnest,  gallant  soul  who  was  called  the  Maid  of 
Orleans.     A  far  better  notion  of  her  presence  and 


JOAN   OF   ARC.  147 

power  than  Shakespeare  gave  is  brought  to  mind 
by  that  recent  French  painting  of  Bastien-Lepage 
—  so  well  known  by  engraving — ^  which  aims  to  set 
forth  the  vision  and  the  voices  that  came  to  her 
amid  the  forest  silence  and  shadows.  Amid  those 
shadows  she  stands  —  startled  :  a  strong,  sweet  fig- 
ure of  a  peasant  maiden  ;  stoutly  clad  and  simply  ; 
capable  of  harvest-work  with  the  strongest  of  her 
sisterhood ;  yet  not  coarse  ;  redeemed  through 
every  fibre  of  body  and  soul  by  a  light  that  shines 
in  her  eye,  looking  dreamily  upward  ;  seeing  things 
others  see  not ;  hoping  things  others  hope  not,  and 
with  clenched  hand  putting  emphasis  to  the  pur- 
pose —  Avhich  the  hope  and  the  vision  kindle ;  pity- 
ing her  poor  France,  and  nerved  to  help  her  —  as 
she  did  —  all  the  w^eary  and  the  troublesome  days 
through,  till  the  shameful  sacrifice  at  English 
hands,  on  the  market-place  of  Rouen,  closed  her 
life  and  her  story. 

The  two  closing  portions  of  the  Henry  VI.  dra- 
mas relate  to  home  concerns.  There  is  much  blood 
in  them  and  tedium  too  (if  one  dare  say  this),  and 
flashes  of  wit — a  crazy  tangle  of  white  and  red  roses 
in  that  English  garden — cleared  up  at  last  in  Shake- 


148  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &^  AVNGS, 

speare's  own  way,  when  Richard  III.*  comes,  in 
drama  of  his  own,  and  crookedness,  and  Satanry  of 
his  own,  and  laughs  his  mocking  hingh  over  the 
corpses  he  makes  of  kings  and  queens  and  princes  ; 
and  at  last  in  Bosworth  field,  ujoon  the  borders  of 
Warwickshire  and  near  to  the  old  Roman  Wat- 
ling  Street,  the  wicked  hunchback,  fighting  like  a 
demon,  goes  down  under  the  sword-thrust  of  that 
Henry  (VII.)  of  Richmond,  who,  as  I  have  said,  was 
gi-andson  to  Katharine  of  Valois,  of  the  coquettish 
courtship. 

No  chronicler  of  them  all,  commonplace  or  pains- 
taking as  he  might  be,  has  so  planted  the  image  of 
the  crooked  Richard  III.  in  nTen's  minds  as  Shake- 
sjieare  :  though  it  is  to  be  feared  that  he  used  some- 
what too  much  blood  in  the  coloring ;  and  doubtful  if 
the  hump-backed  king  was  quite  the  monster  which 
Garrick,  Booth,  and  Macready  have  made  of  him. 


*  Miss  Halsted  in  her  Bichard  ITT.,  chap.  viii.  (following 
the  Historic  Doubts  of  Horace  Walpole),  makes  a  kindly  at- 
tempt to  overset  the  Shakespearean  view  of  Richard's  char- 
acter— in  which,  however,  it  must  he  said  that  she  is  only 
very  moderately  successful.  See  also  a  more  recent  effort  in 
the  same  direction  hy  Alfred  0.  Legge  {The  Unpopular  King, 
etc.     London,  1885). 


CAXTON.  149 

Caxt07i  and  First  English  Printing. 

In  the  midst  of  those  draggiiug,  dreary,  dismal 
war-times,  when  no  poet  lifted  his  voice  in  song, 
when  no  chronicler  who  has  a  worthy  name  wrote 
any  story  of  the  years,  there  came  into  vogue  in 
Europe  and  in  England,  a  trade  —  which  in  its  is- 
sues had  more  to  do  with  the  life  and  spread  of 
good  literature,  than  any  poet,  or  any  ten  poets 
could  accomplish.  You  will  guess  at  once  what 
the  trade  was  ;   it  was  the  trade  of  Printing. 

Bosworth  field  dates  in  1485  :  in  the  middle  of 
the  century  (or  1444)  John  Gutenberg  began  the 
printing  of  a  Bible  ;  and  a  little  after-,  Faust  began 
to  dispose  of  wonderful  copies  of  books,  which  the 
I'oyal  buyers  thought  to  be  manuscripts  :  and  Faust 
did  not  perhaps  undeceive  them  :  yet  cojDies  were 
so  wonderfully  alike  —  one  to  the  other  —  that  book 
lovers  were  puzzled,  and  pushed  inquiry,  and  so 
the  truth  of  the  method  came  out. 

In  1477  William  Caxton  set  up  the  first  English 
printing  press  —  in  an  old  building,  close  upon  West- 
minster Abbey  —  a  building,  which,  if  tradition  is 
to  be  trusted,  Avas  standing  down  to  near  the  middle 


ISO  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KINGS. 

of  the  present  century  ;  and  on  its  demolition  in 
1846  its  timbers  were  converted  into  snuff-boxes 
and  the  like,  as  mementos  of  the  first  printer.  It 
was  in  1-477  that  William  Caxton  issued  the  first 
book,  printed,  with  a  date,  in  England.* 

This  Caxton  was  a  man  worth  knowing  about  on 
many  counts  :  lie  was  a  typical  Englishman,  born 
in  Kent ;  was  apprenticed  to  a  well-to-do  mercer  in 
the  Old  Jewry,  London,  at  a  time  when,  he  says, 
many  poor  M^ere  a-hungered  for  bread  made  of 
fern  roots  ;  —  he  went  over  (while  yet  apprentice)  to 
the  low  countries  of  Flanders,  perhaps  to  represent 
his  master's  interests  ;  abode  there  ;  throve  there  ; 
came  to  be  Governor  of  the  Company  of  English 
merchant  adventui-ers,  in  the  ancient  town  of 
Bruges  :  knew  the  great,  rich  Flemings  f  who  were 

*  Caxton  had  been  concerned,  in  company  with  C'olard 
Mansion,  in  printing  other  books,  on  the  Continent,  at  an 
earlier  date  than  tliis.  The  first  book  "  set  up  "  in  England, 
was  probably  Caxton's  translation — entitled  "  The  Recuyle 
of  t?te  Histories  of  Tmye."  Yid.  Blade's  WiUiam  Caxton: 
London,  1882. 

f  Xoticeable  among  these  Louis  de  Bruges,  Seigneur  de  la 
Gruthuyse  —  afterward  made  (by  Edward  IV.  of  England) 
Earl  of  Winchester. 


CAXTON.  151 

patrons  of  letters;  —  became  friend  and  protege  of 
that  English  Princess  Margaret  who  married  Charles 
Duke  of  Burgundy  ;  did  work  in  translating  old 
books  for  that  great  lady  ;  studied  the  new  printing 
art,  which  had  crept  into  Bruges,  and  finally,  after 
thirty  odd  years  of  life  in  the  busy  Flemish  city 
sailed  away  for  London,  and  set  up  a  press  which 
he  had  brought  with  him,  under  the  shadow  of 
Westminster  towers.  Fifteen  years  and  more  he 
wrought  on  there,  at  his  printer's  craft  —  counting 
up  a  hundred  issues  of  books  ;  making  much  of  his 
own  copy,  both  translation  and  original,  and  dying- 
over  seventy  in  1492.  A  good  tag  to  tie  to  this  date 
is  —  the  Discovery  of  America  ;  Columbus  being- 
over  seas  on  that  early  voyage  of  his,  while  the 
first  English  printer  lay  dying. 

And  what  were  the  books,  pray,  which  Master 
Caxton  —  who,  for  a  wonder,  was  shrewd  business 
man,  as  well  as  inclined  to  literary  ways  —  thought 
it  worth  his  while  to  set  before  the  world  ?  Among 
them  we  find  A  Sequell  of  the  Historie  of  Troie  — 
Tlie  Dictes  and  Saijings  of  Philosophers — a  history 
of  Jason,  the  Game  and  Plays  of  Chesse,  Mallory's 
King  Arthur  (to  which  I  have  previously  alluded), 


152  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  k'LXGS. 

a  Book  of  Courtesie,  ti-anslations  from  Ovid,  Virgil 
and  Cicero  —  also  the  Canterbury  Tales  of  Chaucer 
(of  Avbom  lie  was  gi-eat  admirer)  —  coupling  with 
these  latter,  2:)oems  by  Lydgate  and  Gower  ;  many 
people  in  those  days  seeming  to  rank  these  men  on 
a  level  with  Chaucer  —  just  as  we  3'oke  wiiters  to- 
gether now  in  newspaper  mention,  who  vsill  most 
certainly  be  unyoked  in  the  days  that  are  to  come. 

The  editions  of  the  first  English  books  ranged  at 
about  two  hundred  copies  :  the  type  was  what  we 
call  black  letter,  of  which  four  varieties  were  used 
on  the  Caxton  press,  and  the  punctuation  —  if  any 
—  was  of  the  crudest.  An  occasional  sample  of  his 
work  appears  from  time  to  time  on  the  market  even 
now ;  but  not  at  prices  which  are  inviting  to  the 
most  of  us.  Thus  in  1862,  there  was  sold  in  Ener- 
land,  a  little  Latin  tractate  printed  by  Caxton  —  of 
only  ten  leaves  quarto,  with  twenty-four  lines  to  the 
page,  for  £200  ;  and  I  observe  upon  the  catalogue  of 
a  recent  date  of  Mr.  Quaritch  (the  London  biblio- 
pole) a  copy  of  Godefroi  de  Bouloyne,  of  the  Caxton 
imprint,  offered  at  the  modest  price  of  £1,000. 

Very  shortly  after  the  planting  of  this  first  press 
at  Westminster,  others  were  established  at  Oxford 


JULIANA    BARNES.  153 

and  also  at  the  great  monastery  of  St.  Albans. 
Among  the  early  books  printed  at  this  latter  place  — 
say  "within  ten  years  after  Gaston's  first  —  was  a 
booklet  written  by  a  certain  Dame  Juliana  Barnes  ;* 
it  is  the  first  work  we  have  encountered  written 
by  a  woman  ;  and  what  do  you  think  may  have  been 
its  subject ?  Religion  —  poesy  —  love  —  embroid- 
ery ?  Not  one  of  these  ;  but  some  twenty  odd  pages 
of  crude  verse  "  upon  the  maner  of  huntyng  for  all 
maner  of  bestys"  (men  —  not  being  included) ;  and 
she  writes  with  the  gusto  and  particularity  of  a  man 
proud  of  his  falcons  and  his  dogs.  Warton  says 
blandly  :  "  The  barbarism  of  the  times  strongly  ap- 
pears in  the  indelicate  expressions  which  she  often 
uses ;  and  which  are  equally  incompatible  with  her 
sex  and  profession."  The  allusion  to  her  "profes- 
sion "  has  reference  to  her  supposed  position  as 
prioress  of  a  convent ;  this,  however,  is  matter  of 
grave  doubt. 

*  More  frequently  called  Jidmna  Berners  —  supposed  rela- 
tive of  the  Lords  Berners  and  Abbess  of  Sopwell.  Rev. 
Mr.  Skeat,  however  —  a  very  competent  witness  —  confirms 
the  reading  given.  For  discussion  of  the  question  see  the 
Anglerh  Note  Book,  No.  iv.  (1884)  and  opinions  of  Messrs. 
Quaritch  &  Westwood. 


154  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KTNGS. 

Old  Private  Letters. 

But  this  is  not  the  only  utterance  of  a  female 
voice  which  we  hear  from  out  those  years  of  barren- 
ness and  moil.  In  1787  there  appeared  in  England 
a  book  made  up  of  what  were  called  Paston  Let- 
ters *  —  published  and  vouched  for  by  an  antiqua- 
rian of  Norfolk,  who  had  the  originals  in  his  posses- 
sion —  and  which  were  in  fact  familiar  letters  that 
had  passed  between  the  members  and  friends  of  a 
well-to-do  Norfolk  family  in  the  very  years  of  the 
War  of  the  Eoses,  of  Caxton,  of  King  Richard,  and 
of  Wynkyn  de  Worde. 

Among  the  parties  to  these  old  letters,  there  is  a 
John  Paston  senior  and  a  Sir  John  Paston,  and  a 
John  Paston  the  younger  and  a  good  Margery  Pas- 
ton ;  there  is  a  Sir  John  Fastolf  too  —  as  luck  would 
have  it.     Was  this  the  prototype  f  of  Shakespeare's 

*  The  authenticity  of  these  letters,  published  by  John 
Fenn,  Esq.,  F.A.S.,  has  been  questioned  by  Herman  Meri- 
vale  and  others ;  James  Gairdner,  however  (of  the  Record 
office),  has  argued  in  their  favor,  and  would  seem  to  have 
put  the  question  at  rest. 

+  Fuller,  in  his  Worthies  of  England,  says  "  The  comedian 
is  not  excusable  by  some  alteration  of  his  name,  seeing  the 


P ASTON  LETTERS.  155 

man  of  humors?  Probably  not :  nor  can  we  say  of 
a  certainty  that  he  was  the  runaway  warrior  who 
was  of  so  bad  repute  for  a  time  in  the  army  of  the 
Duke  of  Bedfoi-d :  but  we  do  know  from  these  musty 
jDapers  that  he  had  a  "Jacket  of  red  velvet,  bound 
round  the  bottom  with  red  leather,"  and  "Another 
jacket  of  russet  velvet  lyned  with  blanket  clothe  ;" 
also  "  Two  jackets  of  deer's  leather,  with  a  collar  of 
black  velvet,"  and  so  on. 

"We  do  not  however  care  so  much  about  this  Fas- 
tolf  inventory,  as  for  what  good  Margaret  Paston 
may  have  to  say  :  and  as  we  read  her  letters  we  seem 
to  go  back  on  her  quaint  language  and  her  good 
wifely  fondness  to  the  veiy  days  when  they  were 
written  —  in  the  great  country-house  of  Norfolk,  near 
upon  the  city  of  Norwich,  with  the  gentle  east  wind 
from  the  German  Ocean,  blowing  over  the  Norfolk 
fens,  and  over  the  forests,  and  over  the  orchards, 
and  over  the  barns,  and  into  the  hall-windows,  and 
lifting  the  very  sheets  of  paper  on  which  the  good 
dame  Margery  is  writing.     And  what  does  she  say  ? 

vicinity  of  sounds  intrench,  on  the  memory  of  a  worthy 
Knight  ;  and  few  do  heed  the  inconsiderable  difference  iu 
spelling  their  names." 


1S6  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

"Ryte  worshipful  husband,  I  recommend  me 
unto  YOU  "  —  she  begins  ;  and  thereafter  goes  on  to 
speak  of  a  son  who  has  been  doing  unwise  things, 
and  been  punished  therefor  as  would  seem  :  — 

"  As  for  his  demeaning,  syn  you  departed,  in  good  faith, 
it  hath  been  ryt  good,  I  hope  he  will  be  well  demeaned  to 
please  you  liereafterward ;  and  I  beseche  yon  hartily  that  you 
would  vouchsafe  to  be  hys  good  fader,  for  I  hope  he  is  chas- 
tyzed,  and  will  be  worthier.  As  for  all  oder  tyngges  at 
home,  I  hope  that  I,  and  oder  shall  do  our  part  therein,  as 
wel  as  we  may ;  but  as  for  mony  it  cometh  in  slowly,  and 
God  hav  you  in  his  keeping,  and  sen  you  good  speed  in  all 
yr  matters." 

Affain,   in  another  note,  she  addresses   her  hus- 

band,  — 

"Myn  oune  sweethert  [a  good  many  years  after  marriage 
too!]  in  my  most  humble  wyse  I  recommend  me  to  you  ; 
desiring  hertly  to  her  of  your  welfare,  the  which  I  beseche 
Almighty  God  preserve  and  kepe." 

And  a  son  writes  to  this  same  worthy  Marga- 
ret :  — 

"Ryght  worshipful  and  my  moste  kynde  and  tender 
moder,  I  recommend  me  to  you,  thanking  you  of  the  great 
coste,  and  of  the  grete  chere  that  ye  dyd  me,  and  myn,  at 
my  last  being  with  you.  Item :  As  for  the  books  that  weer 
Sir  James  [would]  it  like  you  that  I  may  have  them  ?  I  am 
not  able  to  buy  them  •,  but  somewhat  wolde  I  give,  and  the 


P ASTON  LETTERS.  157 

remnant  with  a  good  devout  hert,  bj  my  trutlie,  I  will  pray 
for  his  soiile. 

"  Also,  moder,  I  herd  while  in  London  ther  was  a  goodly 
young  woman  to  marry  whyche  was  daughter  to  one  Seff, 
a  mercer,  and  she  will  have  200  jiounds  in  money  to  her 
marriage,  and  20  £  by  year  after  the  dysesse  of  a  step- 
moder  of  hers,  whiche  is  upon  50  yeeres  of  age  :  and  fore  I 
departed  out  o'  Lunnon,  I  spak  with  some  of  the  mayd's 
friends,  and  hav  gotten  their  good  wille  to  hav  her  married 
to  my  broder  Edmond.  Master  '  Pykenham  too  is  another 
that  must  be  consulted  —  so  he  says :  Wherefore,  Moder,  we 
must  beseeche  you  to  helpe  us  forward  with  a  lettyr  to  Mas- 
ter Pykenham,  for  to  remember  him  for  to  handyl  this 
matter,  now,  this  Lent." 

A  younger  son  writes  :  — 

"  I  beseeche  you  humbly  of  your  blessing:  also,  modyr, 
I  beseeche  you  that  ther  may  be  purveyed  some  meane  that 
I  myth  have  sent  me  home  by  the  same  messenger  that 
shall  bring  my  Aunt  Poynings  answer  —  two  paire  hose  — 
1  payr  blak  and  another  russet,  whyche  be  redy  for  me  at 
the  hosers  with  the  crooked  back  next  to  the  Blk  Friars  gate, 
within  Ludgate.  John  Pampyng  knoweth  him  well  eno'. 
And  if  the  blk  hose  be  paid  for,  he  will  send  me  the  russet 
ones  unpaid  for.  I  beseeche  you  that  this  geer  be  not  for- 
got, for  I  have  not  an  whole  hose  to  do  on.  I  pray  you  visit 
the  Rood  of  St.  Pauls,  aud  St.  Savior  at  Barmonsey  whyls 
ye  abide  in  London,  and  let  my  sister  Margery  go  with  you  to 
pray  to  them  that  she  may  have  a  good  husband  ere  she  come 
home  again.  Written  at  Norwich  on  holyrood  day,  by  yr 
"  Son  and  lowly  Servant 

"  Jno:  Paston  the  Youngest.'' 


i5«  LANDS,  LETTERS,  £-  AVA'GS. 

This  sounds  as  home-like  as  if  it  were  written 
yesterday,  and  about  one  of  us  —  even  to  the  send- 
ing of  two  pair  of  hose  if  one  was  paid  for.  And 
yet  this  famihar,  boy-hke  letter  was  written  in  the 
year  1465 :  six  years  before  Caxton  had  set  up 
his  press  in  Westminster  —  twenty-seven  before 
Columbus  had  landed  on  San  Salvador,  and  at  a 
time  when  Louis  XI.  and  barber  Oliver  (whose 
characters  are  set  forth  in  Scott's  story  of  Quentin 
Durward)  were  hanging  men  who  angered  them 
on  the  branches  of  the  trees  which  grew  around 
the  dismal  palace  of  Plessis-les-Tours,  in  France. 

A  Burst  of  Balladry. 

I  have  brought  my  readers  through  a  waste  liter- 
ary country  to-day  ;  but  we  cannot  reach  the  oases 
of  bloom  without  going  across  the  desert  spaces. 
In  looking  back  upon  this  moil  and  turmoil  —  this 
fret  and  wear  and  barrenness  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, in  which  we  have  welcomed  talk  about  Cax- 
ton's  sorry  translations,  and  the  wheezing  of  his 
press  ;  and  have  given  an  ear  to  the  hunting  dis- 
course of  Dame  Juliana,  for  want  of  better  things  ; 
and  have  dwelt  with  a  certain  gleesomeness  on  the 


BALL  ADR  V.  1 59 

homely  Paston  Letters,  let  us  not  forget  that  there 
has  been  all  the  while,  and  running  through  all  the 
years  of  stagnation,  a  bright  thread  of  balladry, 
with  glitter  and  with  gayety  of  colox*.  This  ballad 
music  —  whose  first  burst  we  can  no  more  pin  to  a 
date  than  we  can  the  first  singing  of  the  birds  — 
had  hghtened,  in  that  early  century,  the  walk  of  the 
wayfarer  on  all  the  paths  of  England  ;  it  had  spun 
its  tales  by  bivouac  fires  in  France  ;  it  had  caught 
—  as  in  silken  meshes  —  all  the  young  foragers  on 
the  Avays  of  Romance,  To  this  epoch,  of  which 
we  have  talked,  belongs  most  likely  that  brave  bal- 
lad of  Chevy  Chase,  which  keeps  alive  the  memory 
of  Otterbourne,  and  of  that  woful  hunting  which 
"Once  there  did,   in  Chevy  Chase  befal." 

"To  drive  the  deare  with  hounde  and  home 
Erie  Percy  took  his  way ; 
The  child  may  rue,  that  is  unborn 
The  hunting  of  that  day." 

Hereabout,  too,  belongs  in  all  probability  the 
early  English  shaping  of  the  jingling  history  of  the 
brave  deeds  of  Sir  Guy  of  Warwick ;  and  some  of 
the  tales  of  Robin  Hood  and  his  "  pretty  men  all," 
which  had  been  sung  in  wild  and  crude  carols  for 


i6o  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KINGS. 

a  century  or  more,  now  seem  to  have  taken  on  a 
more  regular  Ixillad  garniture,  and  certainly  be- 
came fixtures  in  type.  This  is  specially  averred 
of  "  Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk,"  beginning  :  — 

"In  summer  wlien  the  sliawes  be  slieyiie 

And  leves  be  large  and  long, 
Hit  is  full  merrj,   in  feyre  forest, 

To  here  the  foule's  song; 
To  see  the  dere  draw  to  the  dale, 

And  leve  the  hilles  hee, 
And  shadow  them  in  the  leves  green, 

Under  the  grenwode  tree." 

But  was  Eobin  Hood  a  myth?  Was  he  a  real 
yeoman  —  was  he  the  Earl  of  Huntington?  We 
cannot  tell  ;  we  know  no  one  who  can.  We  know 
only  that  this  hero  of  the  folk-songs  made  the  com- 
mon people's  ideal  of  a  good  fellow  —  brave,  lusty 
—  a  capital  bowman,  a  wondrous  wrestler,  a  lover 
of  good  cheer,  a  hater  of  pompous  churchmen,  a 
spoiler  of  the  rich,  a  helper  of  the  poor,  with  such 
advices  as  these  for  Little  John  :  — 

"  Loke  ye  do  no  housbande  harme 
That  tylleth  with  his  plough  ; 
Ko  more  ye  shall  no  good  yeman 
That  walketh  by  grenewode  shawe, 


NUT-BROWN  MAID.  i6i 

Ne  no  knyglat,  ne  no  squy^r, 
That  wolde  be  a  good  felawe." 

That  very  claarming  ballad  of  the  Nut -Brown 
Maid  must  also  have  been  well  known  to  contem- 
poraries of  Caxton  :  She  is  daughter  of  a  Baron, 
and  her  love  has  been  won  by  a  wayfarer,  who  says 
he  is  "an  outlaw,"  and  a  banished  man,  a  squire 
of  low  degree.  He  tries  her  faith  and  constancy, 
as  poor  Griselda's  was  tried  in  Chaucer's  story — 
in  Boccaccio's  tale,  and  as  men  have  tried  and 
teased  women  from  the  beginning  of  time.  He 
sets  before  her  all  the  dangers  and  the  taunts 
that  will  come  to  her ;  she  must  forswear  her 
friends ;  she  must  go  to  the  forest  with  him  ;  she 
must  not  be  jealous  of  any  other  maiden  lying 
'perdue  there  ;  she  must  dare  all,  and  brave  all,  — 

"  Or  else — I  to  the  greenwood  go 
Alone,  a  banished  man." 

At  last,  having  tormented  her  sufficiently,  he  con- 
fesses —  that  he  is  not  an  outlaw  —  not  a  banished 
man,  but  one  who  will  give  her  wealth,  and  rank,  and 
name  and  fame.     And  I  will  close  out  our  present 

talk  with  a  vei'selet  or  two  from  this  rich  old  ballad. 
11 


i62  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  KINGS. 

The  wooer  says  — 

"  I  counsel  you,  remember  howe 

It  is  110  maydens  law 
Nothing  to  doubt,  but  to  ren  out 

To  wed  with  an  outlaw  : 
For  ye  must  there,  in  your  hand  here 

A  bowe  ready  to  draw, 
And  as  a  thefe,  thus  must  you  live 

Ever  ill  drede  and  awe 
Whereby  to  you  grete  harme  might  growe  ; 

Yet  had  I  lever  than 
That  I  had  to  the  grenewode  go 

Alone,  a  banished  man." 

Site:  "I  think  not  nay,  but  as  ye  say 

It  is  no  maiden's  lore 
But  love  may  make  me,  for  your  sake 

As  I  have  say'd  before, 
To  come  on  fote,   to  hunt  and  sliote 

To  get  us  mete  in  store ; 
For  so  that  I,   your  company 

May  have,  I  ask  no  more, 
From  which  to  part,  it  maketh  my  hart 

As  cold  as  any  stone  ; 
For  in  my  minde,   of  all  mankinde 

I  love  but  you  alone." 

He:  "A  baron's  child,  to  be  beguiled 
It  were  a  cursed  dede  ! 
To  be  felawe  with  an  outlawe 
Almighty  God  forbid  I 


NUT-BROWN  MAID.  163 

Yt  better  were,  the  poor  Squyere 

Alone  to  forest  yede, 
Than  ye  shold  say,  another  day 

Til  at  by  my  cursed  dede 
Ye  were  betrayed ;    wherefore  good  maid 

The  best  rede  that  I  can 
Is  that  I  to  the  grenewode  go 

Alone,  a  banished  man." 

BTie:  "Whatever  befal,  I  never  shall 

Of  this  thing  you  upraid  ; 
But  if  ye  go,   and  leve  me  so 

Then  have  ye  me  betrayed  ; 
Remember  you  wele,  how  that  ye  dele 

For  if  ye,  as  ye  said 
Be  so  unkjTide  to  leave  behinde 

Your  love  the  Nut  Brown  Mayd 
Trust  me  truly,  that  I  shall  die 

Soon  after  ye  be  gone ; 
For  in  my  minde,  of  all  mankinde 

I  love  but  you  alone." 

He:  "My  own  deare  love,  I  see  thee  prove 

That  ye  be  kynde  and  true : 
Of  mayd  and  wife,  in  all  my  life 

The  best  that  ever  I  knewe 
Be  merry  and  glad ;    be  no  more  sad 

The  case  is  chaunged  newe 
For  it  were  ruthe,  that  for  your  truthe 

Ye  should  have  cause  to  rue  ; 
Be  i:.ot  dismayed,  whatever  I  said 


1 64  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KLVGS. 

To  you  when  I  began  ; 
I  will  not  to  the  ijrenewode  go 
I  am  no  banished  man." 

And  she,  with  delight  and  fear  — 

"  These  tidings  be  more  glad  to  me 

Than  to  be  made  a  quene ; 
If  I  were  sure  they  shold  endure 

But  it  is  often  seene 
When  men  wyl  break  promise,  they  speak 

The  wordes  on  the  splene  : 
Ye  shape  some  wyle,   me  to  beguile 

And  stele  from  me  I  wene  ; 
Then  were  the  case,  worse  than  it  was 

And  I  more  woebegone, 
For  in  my  minde,  of  all  mankynde 

I  love  but  you  alone." 

Then  he  —  at  last,  — 

"Ye  shall  not  nede,  further  to  drede 

I  will  not  disparage 
You  (God  defend  ! )  sy th  ye  descend 

Of  so  grate  a  lineage  ; 
Now  understand — to  Westmoreland 

Which  is  mine  heritage 
I  wyl  you  bring,  and  with  a  ryng 

By  way  of  marriage 
I  wyl  you  take,  and  lady  make 

As  shortcly  as  I  can  : 
Thus  have  you  won  an  Erly's  son 

And  not  a  banished  man." 


BALLADRY.  165 

In  our  next  chapter  we  shall  enter  upon  a  dif- 
ferent century,  and  encounter  a  different  people. 
We  shall  find  a  statelier  king,  whose  name  is  more 
familiar  to  you :  In  place  of  the  fat  knight  and 
Prince  Hal,  we  shall  meet  brilliant  churchmen  and 
hard-headed  reformers ;  and  in  place  of  Otter- 
bourne  and  its  balladry,  we  shall  see  the  smoke 
of  Smithfield  fires,  and  listen  to  the  psalmody  of 
Sternhold. 


CHAPTER  V. 

WHEN  we  turned  the  leaf  upon  the  Balladry 
of  England,  we  were  ujjon  fifteenth  cen- 
tury ground,  which,  you  will  remember,  we  found 
very  barren  of  great  writers.  Gower  and  Froissart, 
whom  we  touched  ujDon,  slipped  off  the  stage  just 
as  the  centur}^  began  —  their  names  making  two  of 
those  joined  in  that  group  of  deaths  to  which  I  called 
attention,  and  which  marked  the  meeting  of  two 
centuries.  Next  we  had  glimpse  of  Lj'dgate  and  of 
King  James  (of  Scotland),  who,  at  their  best,  only 
gave  faint  token  of  the  poetic  spirit  which  illumi- 
nated the  far  better  verses  of  Chaucer. 

We  then  passed  over  the  pei-iod  of  the  Henrys, 
and  of  the  War  of  the  Roses,  with  mention  of 
Shakespeare's  Falstaff — ^  of  his  Prince  Hal  —  his 
Agincourt  —  his  courtship  of  Katharine  of  Valois  — 
his  inadequate  presentment  of  the  Maid  of  Orleans 


HENRY   VIII.  167 

—  his  crabbed  and  crooked  Richard  III.  —  all 
rounded  out  with  the  battle  of  Bosworth  field,  and 
the  coming  to  power  of  Henry  of  Richmond. 

We  found  the  book-trade  taking  on  a  new  phase 
with  Caxton's  press  :  w^e  gave  a  tinkling  bit  of  Skel- 
ton's   "  Merry  Margaret ; "  we  put  a  woman-writer 

—  Dame  Juliana  Barnes  —  for  the  first  time  on  our 
list ;  we  lingered  over  the  quaint  time-stained  Pas- 
ton  Letters,  which  smelled  so  strongly  of  old  Eng- 
lish home-life ;  and  we  summed  up  our  talk  with  a 
little  bugle-note  of  that  Balladry  which  made  fitful 
snatches  of  music  all  through  the  weai'iness  of  those 
hundred  years. 

Early  Days  of  Henry  VIII. 

To-day  we  front  the  sixteenth  century.  Great 
names  and  great  deeds  crop  out  over  it  as  thickly 
as  leaves  grow  in  summer.  At  the  very  outset, 
three  powerful  monarchs  came  almost  abreast  upon 
the  scene  —  Henry  VHI.  of  England,  Francis  I.  of 
France,  and  Charles  V.  of  Spain,  Germany,  and  the 
Low  Countries. 

Before  the  first  quarter  of  the  century  had  passed, 
the  monk  Luther  had  pasted  his  ticket  upon  the 


1 68  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KINGS. 

doors  of  the  church  at  Wittemhcrg  ;  and  that  other 
soldier-monk,  Loyola,  was  astir  with  the  beginnings 
of  Jesuitism.  America  had  been  planted  ;  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope  was  no  longer  the  outpost  of  stormy 
wastes  of  water  with  no  shores  beyond.  St.  Peter's 
church  was  a-building  across  the  Tiber,  and  that 
brilliant,  courteous,  vicious,  learned  Leo  X.  was 
lording  it  in  Eome.  .  The  Moors  and  their  Saracen 
faith  had  been  driven  out  of  the  pleasant  countries 
that  are  watered  by  the  Guadalquivir.  Titian  was 
alive  and  working  ;  and  so  was  Michael  Angelo  and 
Raphael,  in  the  great  art-centres  of  Italy :  and  Ven- 
ice was  in  this  time  so  rich,  so  grand,  so  beautiful, 
so  abounding  in  princely  houses,  in  pictures,  in 
books,  in  learning,  and  in  all  social  splendors,  that 
to  pass  two  winters  in  l^he  City  of  the  Lagoon,  was 
equal  to  the  half  of  a  polite  education  ;  and  I  sup- 
pose that  a  Florentine  or  Venetian  or  Roman  of  that 
day,  thought  of  a  pilgrimage  to  the  far-away,  murky 
London,  as  Parisians  think  now  of  going  to  Chica- 
go, or  Omaha,  or  San  Francisco  —  excellent  places, 
with  delightful  people  in  them  ;  but  not  the  centres 
about  which  the  literary  and  art  world  goes  spin- 
ning, as  a  wheel  goes  spinning  on  its  hub. 


HENRY    VII I.  169 

We  have  in  the  contem]Dorarv  note.?  of  a  ^vell- 
known  Venetian  chroniclei',  Marini  Sanuto  —  who 
was  secretary  to  the  famous  Council  of  Ten  —  evi- 
dence of  the  impression  which  was  made  on  that 
far-oft'  centre  of  business  and  of  learning,  by  such 
an  event  as  the  accession  of  Henry  YHl.  to  the 
throne  of  England.  This  Sanuto  was  a  man  of 
great  dignity  ;  and  by  virtue  of  his  position  in  the 
Council,  heard  all  the  "  relations  "  of  the  ambassa- 
dors of  Venice  ;  and  hence  his  Diary  is  a  great  mine 
of  material  for  contemjDorary  history. 

"  News  have  come,"  he  says,  "  through  Rome  of  the  death 
of  the  King  of  EngLand  on  April  20th  [1509].  'Twas  known 
in  Lucca  on  the  6th  May,  by  letters  from  the  bankers  Bon- 
visi.  The  new  King  is  nineteen  years  old,  a  worthy  King, 
and  hostile  to  France.  He  is  the  son-in-law  of  tlie  King  of 
Spain.  His  father  was  called  Henry,  and  fifty  odd  years  of 
age  ;  he  was  a  very  great  mhev^  but  a  man  of  vast  ability, 
and  had  accumulated  so  much  gold  that  he  is  supposed  to 
have  [had]  more  than  wellnigh  all  the  other  Kings  of 
Christendom.  The  King,  his  son,  is  liberal  and  handsome 
— the  friend  of  Venice,  and  the  enemy  of  France.  This 
intelligence  is  most  satisfactory." 

Certainly  the  new  king  was  most  liberal  in  his 
spending,  and  as  certainly  was  abundantly  provided 
for.     And  money  counted  in  those  days  —  as  it  does 


170  LAXDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KLYGS. 

most  whiles  :  no  man  in  England  could  come  to  the 
dignity  of  Justice  of  the  Peace  —  such  office  as  our 
evergreen  friend  Justice  Shallow  holds  in  Shake- 
speare—  excejDt  he  had  a  rental  of  £20  per  annum, 
equivalent  to  a  thousand  dollars  of  present  money 
—  measured  by  its  purchasing  power  of  wheat.*  By 
the  same  standard  the  average  Earl  had  a  revenue 
of  £20,000,  and  the  richest  of  the  peers  is  put  down 
at  a  probable  income  of  three  times  this  amount. 

What  a  special  favorite  of  the  crown  could  do  in 
the  way  of  expenditure  is  still  made  clear  to  us  by 
those  famous  walks,  gardens,  and  gorgeous  saloons 
of  Hampton  Court,  where  the  great  Cardinal  Wolsey 
set  his  armorial  bearings  upon  the  wall  —  still  to 
be  seen  over  the  entrance  of  the  Clock  Court.  If 
you  go  there  —  and  every  American  visitor  in  London 
should  be  sure  to  find  a  way  thither  —  you  will  see, 
may  be,  in  the  lower  range  of  windows,  that  look 
upon  the  garden  court  —  the  pots  of  geranium  and 
the  tabby  cats  belonging  to  gentlewomen  of  rank, 
but  of  decayed  fortune  —  humble  j)ensioners  of  Vie- 

*  The  equipment  of  a  parsonage  house  in  Kent  in  those 
A.a.ys,  is  set  forth  in  full  inventory  (from  MS.  in  the  Rolls 
House)  by  Mr.  YvowAe.— History  of  England,  chap,  i  ,  p.  47. 


HENRY   VIII.  17-1 

toria  —  who  occupy  the  sunny  rooms  from  which,  in 
the  times  we  are  talking  of,  the  pampered  servants 
of  the  great  Cardinal  looked  out.  And  when  the 
great  man  drove  to  court,  or  into  the  city,  his  ret- 
inue of  outriders  and  lackeys,  and  his  golden  trap- 
pings, made  a  spectacle  for  all  the  street  mongers. 

Into  that  panorama,  too,  of  the  early  days  of 
Henry  Vm.,  enters  with  slow  step,  and  with  sad 
speech,  poor  Katharine  of  Aragon  —  the  first  in  or- 
der of  this  stalwart  king's  wives.  Mrs.  Fanny  Kem- 
ble  Butler  used  to  read  that  queen's  speech  with  a 
pathos  that  brought  all  the  sadnesses  of  that  sad 
court  to  life  again  :  Miss  Cushman,  too,  you  may 
possibly  have  heard  giving  utterance  to  the  same 
moving  story ;  but,  I  think,  with  a  masculinity  about 
her  manner  she  could  never  wholly  shake  off,  and 
which  gave  the  impression  that  she  could  —  if  need 
Avere  —  give  the  stout  king  such  a  buffet  on  the  ears 
as  would  put  an  end  to  all  chaffer  about  divorce. 

Shakespeare,  writing  that  play  of  Henry  VIII., 
probably  during  the  lifetime  of  Elizabeth  (though 
its  precise  date  and  full  authenticity  are  matters  of 
doubt),  could  not  speak  with  very  much  freedom  of 
the  great  queen's  father  :  Slie  had  too  much  of  that 


172  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  A'LVGS. 

father's  spirit  in  her  to  permit  that ;  otherwise,  I 
think  tlic  great  dramatist  would  have  given  a  blazing 
score  to  the  cruelty  and  Bluebeardism  of  Henry  VIII. 
I  know  that  there  be  those  acute  historic  inquir- 
ers who  would  persuade  us  to  believe  that  the  king's 
much-marrying  propensities  were  all  in  order,  and 
legitimate,  and  agreeable  to  English  constitutional 
sanction:  but  I  know,  too,  that  there  is  a  strong 
British  current  of  common-sense  setting  down  all 
through  the  centuries  w^hich  finds  harbor  in  the 
old-fashioned  belief  —  that  the  king  who,  with  six 
successive  wives  of  his  own  choice,  divorced  two, 
and  cut  off  the  heads  of  other  two,  must  have  had 
—  vicious  weaknesses.  For  my  own  part,  I  take  a 
high  moral  delight  —  Froude  to  the  contrary — in 
thinking  of  him  as  a  clever,  dishonest,  good-natured, 
obstinate,  selfish,  ambitious,  tempestuous,  arrogant 
scoundrel.  Yet,  withal,  he  was  a  great  favorite  in 
his  young  days ;  —  so  tall,  so  trim,  so  stout,  so  rich, 
so  free  with  his  money.  No  wonder  the  stately  and 
disconsolate  Queen  (of  Aragon)  said  :  — 

"  Would  I  liad  never  trod  this  English  earth, 
Or  felt  the  flatteries  that  grow  upon  it  ; 
Ye've  angels  faces,  but  Heaven  knows  your  hearts !  " 


CARDINAL    WOLSEY.  173 

And  this  wilful  King  befriended  learning  and  let- 
ters in  bis  own  wilful  way.  Nay,  be  came  to  bave 
ambitions  of  bis  own  in  tbat  direction,  wben  be 
grew  too  beavy  for  practice  witb  tbe  long-bow,  or 
for  feats  of  riding  —  in  wbicb  matters  be  bad  gained 
eminence  even  amongst  tbose  trained  to  sports  and 
exercises  of  tbe  field. 

Cardinal   WolseT/  and  Sir  Thomas  More. 

It  was  witb  tbe  King's  capricious  furtberance 
tbat  Cardinal  Wolsey  became  so  august  a  friend  of 
learning.  Tbe  annalists  deligbt  in  telling  us  bow 
tbe  great  Cardinal  went  down  to  St.  Paul's  Scbool 
to  attend  upon  an  exbibition  of  tbe  boys  tbere,  wbo 
set  afoot  a  tragedy  founded  upon  tbe  story  of  Dido. 
And  at  tbe  boys'  scbool  was  tben  establisbed  as 
bead-master  tbat  famous  William  Lilly  *  wbo  bad 
learned  Greek  in  bis  voyagiDg  into  Eastern  seas, 
and  was  among  tbe  first  to  teacb  it  in  England  :  be 
was  tbe  autbor  too  of  tbat  Lilly's  Latin   Grammar 

*  Not  to  be  confounded  with  William  Lilly  the  astrologer 
of  the  succeeding  century.  William  Lilly  of  St.  Paul's  was 
b.  1468  ;  d.  (of  the  plague)  in  1533.  His  Latin  Grammar 
was  first  published  in  1513. 


i74  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  K/NGS.   . 

wliich  was  in  use  for  centuries,  and  of  which  later 
editions  are  hanging  about  now  in  old  New  Eng- 
land garrets,  from  whose  mouldy  pages  our  grand- 
fathers learned  to  decline  their  pennte — pennaruiu. 
Wolsey  wrote  a  preface  for  one  of  the  earlier  issues 
of  this  Lilly's  Grammar  ;  and  the  King  gave  it  a 
capital  advertisement  by  proclaiming  it  illegal  to 
use  any  other.  The  Cardinal,  moreover,  in  later 
years  established  a  famous  school  at  his  native  place 
of  Ipswich  (a  rival  in  its  day  to  that  of  Eton),  and 
he  issued  an  address  to  all  the  schoolmasters  of 
England  in  favor  of  accomplishing  the  boys  sub- 
mitted to  their  charge  in  the  most  elegant  litera- 
tures. 

The  great  Hall  of  Christ's  Church  College,  Ox- 
ford, still  further  serves  to  keep  in  mind  the  mem- 
ory and  the  munificence  of  Cardinal  Wolsey  :  it 
must  be  remembered,  however,  in  estimating  his 
munificence  that  he  had  only  to  confiscate  the  rev- 
enues of  a  small  monastery  to  make  himself  full- 
pocketed  for  the  endowment  of  a  college.  'Tis 
certain  that  he  loved  learning,  and  that  he  did 
much  for  its  development  in  the  season  of  his 
greatest  power  and  influence  ;  certain,  too,  that  his 


SIR    THOMAS  MORE.  175 

ambitions  were  too  large  for  the  wary  King,  his 
master,  and  brought  him  to  that  dismal  fall  from 
his  high  estate,  which  is  pathetically  set  forth  in 
Shakespeare's  Henry  VIII.  : 

" Farewell  to  all  my  greatness  1 


This  is  the  state  of  man  :  to-day  he  puts  forth 
The  tender  leaves  of  hope,   to-morrow  blossoms 
And  bears  his  blushing  honors  thick  upon  him  ; 
The  third  day  comes  a  frost — a  killing  frost ; 
And— when  he  thinks,   good  easy  man,  full  surely 
His  greatness  is  a  ripening — nips  his  root 
And  then  he  falls  as  I  do.     I  have  ventured, 
Like  little  wanton  boys  that  swim  on  bladders, 
This  many  summers  in  a  sea  of  glory  ; 
But  far  beyond  my  depth ;  my  high  blown  pride 
At  length  broke  under  me  ;  and  now  has  left  me, 
Weary,  and  old  with  service,   to  the  mercy 
Of  a  rude  stream  that  must  forever  hide  me." 

Another  favorite  of  Henry  in  the  early  days 
of  his  kingship,  and  one  bearing  a  far  more  im- 
portant name  in  the  literary  annals  of  England  than 
that  of  Wolsey,  was  Sir  Thomas  More.  He  was  a 
Greek  of  the  very  Greeks,  in  both  character  and 
attainment.  Born  in  the  heart  of  London  —  in 
Milk  Street,  now  just  outside  of  the  din  and  roar 
of  Cheapside,  he  was  a  scholar  of  Oxford,  and  was 


176  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &^  KLYGS. 

the  son  of  a  knight,  who,  like  Sir  Thomas  himself, 
had  a  reputation  for  shrewd  sayings  —  of  which  the 
old  chronicler,  William  Camden,*  has  reported  this 
sample  :  — 

"Marriage,"  said  tlie  elder  More,  "with  its  chances,  is 
like  dipping  one's  hand  into  a  bag,  with  a  great  many 
snakes  therein,  and  but  one  eel ;  the  which  most  serviceable 
and  comfortable  eel  might  possibly  be  seized  upon  ;  but 
the  chances  are  largely  in  favor  of  catching  a  stinging 
snake :  " 

But,  says  the  chronicler — this  good  knight  did  him- 
self thrust  hi?,  hand  three  several  times  into  such 
a  bag,  and  with  such  ensuing  results  as  preserved 
him  hale  and  sound  to  the  age  of  ninety  or  there- 
about. The  sou  inherited  this  tendency  to  whimsi- 
cal speech,  joining  with  it  rare  merits  as  a  scholar  : 
and  it  used  to  be  said  of  him  as  a  boy,  that  he  could 
thrust  himself  into  the  acting  of  a  Latin  comedy 
and  extemporize  his  part,  with  such  wit  and  apt- 

*  William  Camden,  antiquary  and  chronicler  ;  b.  1551  ;  d. 

1623.      Annales  Eerum  Angliccvrum  el  Hihernicarwn  reg- 

nante  Mizabetha,  pub.  1615.     In  1597  he  published  a  Greek 

Grammar  —  for  the  Westminster  boys ;  he  being  at  the  time 

,  head-master  of  the  school. 


SIR    THOMAS  MORE,  177 

ness,  as  not  to  break  upon  the  drift  of  the  play. 
He  studied,  as  I  said,  at  Oxford  ;  and  afterward 
Law  at  Lincoln's  Inn  ;  was  onewhile  strongly  in- 
clined to  the  Church,  and  under  influence  of  a 
patron  who  was  a  Church  dignitary  became  zealous 
Eeligionist,  and  took  to  wearing  in  penance  a  bris- 
tling hair-shirt  —  which  (or  one  like  it)  he  kept  wear- 
ing till  prison-days  and  the  scaffold  overtook  him, 
as  they  overtook  so  many  of  the  quondam  friends 
of  Henry  VHI.  For  he  had  been  early  presented 
to  that  monarch  —  even  before  Henry  had  come  to 
the  throne  —  and  had  charmed  him  by  his  humor 
and  his  scholarly  talk  :  so  that  when  More  came  to 
live  upon  his  little  farm  at  Chelsea  (very  near  to 
Cheyne  Row  where  Carlyle  died  but  a  few  years 
since)  the  King  found  his  way  thither  on  more  than 
one  occasion  ;  and  there  are  stories  of  his  pacing  up 
and  down  the  garden  walks  in  familiar  talk  with  the 
master. 

There,  too,  came  for  longer  stay,  and  for  longer 
and  friendlier  communings,  the  great  and  schol- 
arly Erasmus  (afterward  teacher  of  Greek  at  Cam- 
bridge)—  and   out   of   one   of  these  visitations  to 

Chelsea  grew  the  conception  and  the  working  out 
13 


178  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-■  KINGS. 

of  his  famous   Praise    of  Folly,    with   its   puuiiiug 
title  —  Encomium  Moria;* 

The  King  promised  preferment  to  More  —  which 
came  in  its  time.  I  think  he  was  in  Flanders  on 
the  King's  business,  when  upon  a  certain  day,  as  he 
was  coming  out  from  the  Antwerp  Cathedral,  he  en- 
countered a  stranger,  with  long  beard  and  sunburnt 
face  —  a  man  of  the  "Ancient  Mariner"  stamp, 
who  had  made  long  voyages  with  that  Amerigo  Ves- 
pucci who  stole  the  honor  of  naming  America :  and 
this  long-bearded  mariner  told  Sir  Thomas  More  of 
the  strange  things  he  had  seen  in  a  country  farther 
off  than  America,  called  Utopia.  Of  course,  it  is  some- 
thing doubtful  if  More  ever  really  encovmtered  such 
a  mariner,  or  if  he  did  not  contrive  him  only  as  a 
good  frontisi^iece  for  his  political  fiction.  This  is 
the  work  by  which  More  is  best  known  (through  its 
English  translations) ;  and  it  has  given  the  word 
Utopian  to  our  every-day  speech.  The  present 
popular  significance  of  this  term  will  give  you  a 
proper  liint  of  the  character  of  the  book :  it  is  an 


*  Erasnnis:  by  Robert  Blackley  Drummoud  (chap.  vii.> 
Loudon,  1873. 


SIR    THOMAS  MORE.  179 

elaborate  and  wbimsical  and  yet  statesmanlike  fore- 
cast of  a  government  too  good  and  honest  and  wise 
to  be  sound  and  true  and  real. 

Sir  Thomas  smacked  the  humor  of  the  thing, 
in  giving  the  name  Utopia,  which  is  Greek  for  No- 
where. If,  indeed,  men  were  all  honest,  and  wom- 
en all  virtuous  and  children  all  rosy  and  helpful, 
we  might  all  live  in  a  Utopia  of  our  own.  All  the 
Fourierites  —  the  Socialists  —  the  Knights  of  Labor 
might  find  the  germs  of  their  best  arguments  in 
this  reservoir  of  the  ideal  maxims  of  statecraft. 
In  this  model  country,  gold  was  held  in  large  dis- 
respect; and  to  keep  the  scorn  of  it  wholesome,  it 
was  put  to  the  vilest  uses  :  a  gi-eat  criminal  was 
compelled  to  wear  gold  rings  in  his  ears  :  chains 
were  made  of  it  for  those  in  bondage  ;  and  a  partic- 
ularly obnoxious  character  put  to  the  wearing  of  a 
gold  head-band  ;  so  too  diamonds  and  pearls  were 
given  over  to  the  decoration  of  infants  ;  and  these, 
with  other  baby  accoutrements,  they  flung  aside  in 
disgust,  so  soon  as  they  came  to  sturdy  childhood. 
When  therefore  upon  a  time,  Ambassadors  came  to 
Utopia,  fx'om  a  strange  country,  with  their  tricksy 
show  of  gold  and  jewels  —  the  old  Voyager  says  :  — 


i8o  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  A'LVCS. 

"  You  sli'*  have  seiie  [Utopian]  children  that  had  casta 
away  their  peerles  and  pretious  stones,  when  they  sawe  the 
like  sticking  iipon  the  Ambassadonrs  cappes  ;  —  digge  and 
pushe  theire  mothers  under  the  sides,  sainge  tlius  to  them, 
— '  Loke  mother  how  great  a  lubbor  doth  yet  were  peerles, 
as  though  he  were  a  litel  child  stil !  '  'Peace  sone,'  saith 
she  ;  '  I  thinke  he  be  some  of  the  Ambassadours  fooles.' " 

Also  ill  this  model  state  industrial  education  was 
in  vogue ;  cliildren  all,  of  whatsovever  parentage, 
were  to  be  taught  some  craft  —  as  "masonrie  or 
smith's  craft,  or  the  carpenter's  science."  Unlawful 
games  were  decried — such  as  "dyce,  cardes,  tennis, 
coytes  [quoits]  — do  not  all  these,"  says  the  author, 
"  sends  the  haunters  of  them  streyghte  a  stealynge, 
when  theyr  money  is  gone  ?  " 

The  Russian  Count  Tolstoi's  opinion  that  money 
is  an  invention  of  Satan  and  should  be  abolished,  is 
set  forth  with  more  humor  and  at  least  equal  logic, 
in  this  Latin  tractate  of  More's. 

In  the  matters  of  Religion  King  Utopus  decreed 
that 

"  it  should  be  lawful  for  everie  man  to  favoure  and  folow 
what  religion  he  would,  and  that  he  migbte  do  the  best  he 
could  to  bring  other  to  his  opinion,  so  that  he  did  it  peace- 
ablie,  gentelle,  quietlie  and  sobelie,  without  hastie  and  con- 
tentious rebuking. " 


SIR    THOMAS  MORE.  i8i 

Yet  this  same  self -contain  ed  Sir  Thomas  More  did 
in  his  after  controversies  with  Tyudale  use  such 
talk  of  him  —  about  his  "  whyning  and  biting  and 
licking  and  tumbling  in  the  myre,"  and  "rubbing 
himself  in  puddles  of  dirt," — as  were  like  an}^- 
thing  but  the  courtesies  of  Utopia.  Indeed  it  is 
to  be  feared  that  theologic  discussion  does  not 
greatly  provoke  gentleness  of  speech,  in  any  time  ; 
it  is  a  very  grindstone  to  put  men's  wits  to  sharp- 
ened edges.  But  More  was  a  most  honest  man 
withal ;  —  fearless  in  advocacy  of  his  own  opinions ; 
eloquent,  self-sacrificing  —  a  tender  father  and 
husband  —  master  of  a  rich  English  speech  (his 
Utopia  was  written  in  Latin,  but  translated  many 
times  into  English,  and  most  languages  of  Con- 
tinental Em-ope),  learned  in  the  classics  —  a  man 
to  be  remembered  as  one  of  the  greatest  of  Henry 
Vni.'s  time  ;  a  Romanist,  at  a  date  when  honestest 
men  doubted  if  it  were  worthiest  to  be  a  King's  man 
or  a  Pope's  man  ;  —  not  yielding  to  his  royal  master 
in  points  of  religious  scruple,  and  with  a  lofty  ob- 
stinacy in  what  he  counted  well  doing,  going  to  the 
scaffold,  with  as  serene  a  step  as  he  had  ever  put  to 
his  walks  in  the  pleasant  gardens  of  Chelsea, 


1 82  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &-  A'LVGS. 

Cranmer,  Latiiner,  Knox^  and  Others. 

A  much  nobler  figure  is  this,  to  my  mind,  than 
that  of  Cranmer,*  who  appears  in  such  picturesque 
lights  iu  the  drama  of  Henry  Vm.  —  who  gave  ad- 
hesion to  ro^'al  wishes  for  divorce  upon  divorce  ; 
who  always  colored  his  religious  allegiances  with 
the  colors  of  the  King  ;  who  was  a  scholar  indeed 
—  learned,  eloquent;  who  wrought  well,  as  it 
l^roved,  for  the  reformed  faith  ;  but  who  wilted 
under  the  fierce  heats  of  trial  ;  would  have  sought 
the  good  will  of  the  blood-thirsty  Mary  ;  but  who 
gave  even  to  his  subserviencies  a  half-tone  that 
brought  distrust,  aud  so  —  finally  —  the  fate  of  that 
quasi-martyrdom  which  has  redeemed  his  memory. 

He  stands  very  grandly  in  his  robes  upon  the 
memorial  cross  at  Oxford :  and  he  has  an  even  more 
august  presence  in  the  final  scene  of  Shakespeare's 
play,  where  amidst  all  churchly  and  courtly  pomp, 
he  christened  the  infant  —  who  was  to  become  the 


*  Cranmer,  b.  1489  ;  d.  1556. 

Complete  edition  of  his  works  published  1834  (Rev.  H. 
Jenkyns).  Cranmer's  Bible  so  called,  because  accompanied 
by  a  prologue,  written  by  Thomas  Cranmer,  Archbishop,  etc. 


CRANMER.  183 

Eoyal  Elizabeth,  aud  says  to  the  assembled  digni- 
taries : 

"  This  royal  infant 
Tho'  in  her  cradle,  j'et  now  promises 
Upon  this  land  a  thousand  thousand  blessings, 
Which  time  will  bring  to  ripeness  :  She  shall  be 
A  pattern  to  all  princes  living  with  her, 
And  all  that  shall  succeed  her.     Truth  shall  nurse  her, 
Holj  and  heavenly  thoughts  still  counsel  her : 
She'shall  be  loved  and  feared. 
A  most  unspotted  lily  shall  she  pass 
To  the  ground,  and  all  the  world  shall  mourn  her."  * 

Tennyson,  in  his  drama  of  Queen  Mary  (a  most 
unfortunate  choice  of  heroine)  gives  a  statuesque 
pose  to  this  same  Archbishop  Cranmer ;  but  Shake- 
speare's figures  are  hard  to  duplicate.  He  was 
with  Henry  VHE.  as  counsellor  at  his  death ;  was 
intimate  adviser  of  the  succeeding  Edward  VI.  : 
and  took  upon  himself  obligations  from  that  Kino* 

*  There  are  many  reasons  for  doubting  if  these  lines  were 
from  Shakespeare's  own  hand.  Emerson  {Representative 
Men)  —  rarely  given  to  Literary  criticism,  remarks  upon 
"the  bad  rhythm  of  the  compliment  to  Queen  Elizabeth" 
as  unworthy  the  great  Dramatist :  so  too,  he  doubts,  though 
with  less  reason  —  the  Shakespearean  origin  of  the  "Wolsey 
Soliloquy.  See  also  Trans.  New  Shakespere  Sodiety  for 
1874.     Part  I.     (Spedding  et  al.) 


,84  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &>  KLNGS. 

(contrary  to  his  promises  to  Henry)  which  brought 
him  to  grief  under  Queen  Mary.  That  brave  thrust 
of  his  offending  hand  into  the  blaze  that  consumed 
him,  cannot  make  us  forget  his  weaknesses  and 
his  recantations ;  nor  will  we  any  more  forget  that 
he  it  was,  who  gave  (1543)  to  the  old  Latin  Litur- 
gy of  the  Church  that  noble,  English  rhythmic 
flow  which  so  largely  belongs  to  it  to-day. 

It  is  quite  impossible  to  consider  the  literary  as- 
pects of  the  period  of  English  history  covered  by 
the  reign  of  Henry  VHI.,  and  the  short  reigns  of 
the  two  succeeding  monarchs,  Edward  VI.  and 
Mary,  without  giving  large  frontage  to  the  Eeform- 
ers  and  religious  controversialists.  Every  scholar 
was  alive  to  the  great  battle  in  the  Church.  The 
Greek  and  Classicism  of  the  Universities  came  to 
have  their  largest  practical  significance  in  connec- 
tion with  the  settlement  of  religious  questions  or  in 
furnishing  weapons  for  the  ecclesiastic  controversies 
of  the  day.  The  voices  of  the  poets  — the  Skeltons, 
the  Sackvilles,  the  Wyatts,  were  chii-ping  sparrows' 
voices  beside  that  din  with  which  Luther  thundered 
in  Germany,  and  Henry  VHI.  thundered  back,  more 
weakly,  from  his  stand-point  of  Anglicanism. 


WILLIAM  TYNDALE.  185 

"We  have  seen  Wolsey  in  bis  garniture  of  gold, 
going  from  court  to  scliool  ;  and  Sir  Thomas  More, 
stern,  strong,  and  unyielding ;  and  Archbishop 
Cranmer,  disposed  to  think  rightly,  but  without  the 
courage  to  back  up  his  thought ;  and  associated 
■with  these,  it  were  well  to  keep  in  mind  the  other 
figures  of  the  great  religious  processional.  There 
was  William  Tyndale,  native  of  Gloucestershire,  a 
slight,  thin  figure  of  a  man  ;  honest  to  the  coi-e ; 
w^ell-taught ;  getting  dignities  he  never  sought  ; 
weai'ied  in  his  heart  of  hearts  by  the  flattering 
coquetries  of  the  King ;  perfecting  the  work  of 
Wyclif  in  making  the  old  home  Bible  readable  by 
all  the  world.  His  translation  was  first  printed 
in  Wittenberg  about  1530:*  I  give  the  Lord's 
Prayer  as  it  appeared  in  the  original  edition  : — 

"Oure  Father  which  arte  in  heven,  halowed  be  thy  name. 
Let  thy  kingdom  come.  Thy  wyll  be  fulfilled,  as  well  in 
erth,  as  hit  ys  in  heven.  Geve  vs  this  daye  oiire  dayly 
breade.  And  forgeve  vs  oure  trespases,  even  as  we  forgeve 
them  which  treespas  vs.  Leade  vs  not  into  temptacion  but 
delyvre  vs  from  yvell.     Amen." 


*  William  Tyndale,  b.  about  1480  ;  d.  (burned  at  the  stake) 
1536.  G.  P.  Marsh  {Eng.  Lamjuacje  and  Early  Lit.)  says 
"  Tyndale's  translation  of  the  Xew  Testament  has  exerted  a 


1 86  LANDS,  LETTERS,    ^  KhXGS. 

But  Tyndale  was  not  safe  in  England ;  nor  yet  in 
the  Low  Countries  whither  he  went,  and  where  the 
long  reach  of  religious  hate  and  jealousy  put  its 
hand  upon  him  and  brought  him  to  a  death  whose 
fiery  ignominies  are  put  out  of  sight  by  the  lus- 
trous quality  of  his  deservings. 

I  see  too  amongst  those  great,  dim  figures,  that 
speak  in  Scriptural  tones,  the  form  of  Hugh  Lati- 
mer, as  he  stands  to-day  on  the  Memorial  Cross  in 
Oxford,  I  think  of  him  too  —  in  humbler  dress  than 
that  which  the  sculptor  has  put  on  him  —  even  the 
yeoman's  clothes,  which  he  wore  upon  his  father's 
farm,  in  the  Valley  of  the  Soar,  when  he  wa-ought 
there  in  the  meadows,  and  drank  in  humility  of 
thought,  and  manly  independence  under  the  skies 
of  Leicestershire  * —  where  (as  he  says),  "My  father 
had  walk  for  an  hundred  sheep,  and  my '  mother 

more  marked  influence  upon  English  pliilology  than  any 
other  native  work  between  the  ages  of  Chaucer  and  of 
Shakespeare." 

*  Latimer  (Hugh)  b.  1491  ;  d.  (at  the  stake)  1555.  He 
was  educated  at  Cambridge— came  to  be  Bishop  of  Worces- 
ter—  wrote  much,  wittily  and  strongly.  A  collection  of  his 
Sermons  was  published  in  1570-71  ;  and  there  have  been 
many  later  issues. 


JOHN  KNOX.  187 

milked  thirty  kine."  He  kept  bis  head  upon  his 
shoulders  through  Henry's  time  —  his  amazing  wit 
and  humor  helping  him  to  security  ;  —  was  in  fair 
favor  with  Edward  ;  but  under  Slary,  walked  coolly 
with  Ridley  to  the  stake,  where  the  fires  were  set, 
to  burn  them  both  in  Oxford. 

Foxe*  too  is  to  be  remembered  for  his  Stories 
of  the  Martyrs  of  these,  and  other  times,  which 
have  formed  the  nightmare  reading  for  so  many 
school-boys. 

I  see,  too,  another  figure  that  will  not  down  in 
this  coterie  of  Reformers,  and  that  makes  itself 
heard  from  beyond  the  Tweed.  This  is  John  Knox,f 
a  near  contemporary  though  something  younger 
than  most  I  have  named,  and  not  ripening  to  his 

*  John  Foxe,  b.  1517  ;  d.  1587.  He  was  a  native  of  Bos- 
ton, Lincolnshire  ;  was  educated  at  Oxford ;  his  History  of 
the  Acts  and  Monuments  of  the  Church  was  first  publislied 
in  England  in  1563.  There  was  an  earlier  edition  pub- 
lished at  Strasbourg  in  1554. 

f  Born  near  Haddington,  Scotland,  in  1505  (d.  1572);  bred 
a  friar  ;  was  prisoner  in  France  in  1547  ;  resided  long  time 
at  Geneva ;  returned  to  Scotland  in  1559.  Life  by  Laing 
(1847)  and  by  Brandes  (1863);  Swinburne's  Bothioell,  Act 
iv.,  gives  dramatic  rendering  of  a  sermon  by  John  Knox. 
See  also  Carlyle's  Heroes  and  Hero-worships  Lecture  IV. 


l88  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &-  KINGS. 

greatest  power  till  Heury  VIII.  had  gone,     Boru  of 
humble  parentage  in  Scotland  in  the  early  quarter 
of  the  century,  he  was  a  rigid  Papist  in  his  young 
days,  but  a  more  rigid  Keformer  afterward  ;  much 
time  a  prisoner  ;  passing  years  at  Geneva ;  not  al- 
together a  "  gloomy,  shrinking,  fanatic,"  but  keep- 
ing, says  Carlyle,  "  a  pipe  of  Bordeaux  in  that  old 
Edinboro  house  of  his  ;  "  getting  to  know  Cranraer, 
and   the   rest  in  England  ;   discussing  with  these, 
changes  of  Church  Service  ;  counselling  austerities, 
where  Cranmer  admitted  laxities  ;  afraid  of  no  man, 
neither  woman  ; — publishing  in  exile  in  Mary's  day — 
Tlie  first  Blaste  of  the  Trumpet  against  the  monstrous 
Regiment  of  Women,  and  repenting  this  —  quietly  no 
doubt  —  when  Elizabeth  came  to  power.    A  thin,  frail 
man ;  sti'ong  no  ways,  but  in  courage,  and  in  brain  ; 
with  broad  brows  —  black  cap  —  locks  floating  gray 
from  under  it,  in  careless  whirls  that  shook  as  he 
talked ;  an  eye  like  a  falcon's  that  flashed  the  light  of 
twenty  years,  when  sixty  were  on  his  shoulders  ;  in 
after  years,  writhing  with  rheumatic  pains —  crawl- 
ing  upon   his   stick   and  a  servant's  arm  into  his 
Church  of  St.  Andrews  ;  lifted  into  his  pulpit  by 
the  clerk  and  his  attendant  —  leaning  there  on  the 


VERSE-WRITING.  189 

desk,  a  wilted  heap  of  humanity  —  panting,  shaking, 
quivering  —  till  his  breath  came,  and  the  psalm  and 
the  lifted  prayer  gave  courage;  then  —  fierce  tor- 
rents of  speech  (and  a  pounding  of  the  pulpit  till 
it  seemed  that  it  would  fly  in  shivers),  with  a  sharp, 
swift,  piercing  utterance  that  pricked  ears  as  it 
pricked  consciences,  and  made  the  roof-timbers 
clang  with  echoes. 

Of  all  these  men  there  are  no  books  that  take 
high  rank  in  Literature  proper  —  unless  we  except 
the  Utopia  of  More,  and  the  New  Testament  of 
Tyndale  :  but  their  lives  and  thought  were  welded 
by  stout  blows  into  the  intellectual  texture  of  the 
century  and  are  not  to  be  forgotten. 

Yerse  -  Wi'iting  and  Psalmodies. 

And  now,  was  there  really  no  dalliance  with  the 
Muses  in  times  that  brought  to  the  front  such 
fighting  Gospellers  as  we  have  talked  of  ? 

Yes,  even  Thomas  More  did  write  poems  —  hav- 
ing humor  in  them  and  grammatic  proprieties,  and 
his  Latin  prosody  is  admired  of  Classicists :  then 
there  were  the  versifiers  of  the  Psalms,  Sternhold 
and  Hopkins,  and  the  Whittingham  who  succeeded 


I90  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &>  KINGS. 

John  Knox  at  Geneva  —  sharing  that  Scotchman's 
distaste  for  beautiful  rubrics,  and  we  suspect  beau- 
tiful verses  also  —  if  we  may  judge  by  his  version  of 
the  Creed.     This  is  a  sample :  — 

"The  Father,  God  is  ;  God,  the  Son; 
God  —  Holy  Ghost  also; 
Yet  are  not  three  gods  in  all 
But  one  God  and  no  mo." 

From  the  Apostles'  Creed  again,  we  excerpt 
this :  — 

"From  thence,  shall   he  come  for  to  judge 
All  men  both  dead  and  quick. 
I,  in  the  Holy  Ghost  believe 
And  Church  thats  Catholick." 

Hopkins,*  who  was  a  schoolmaster  of  Sufifolk,  and 
the  more  immediate  associate  of  Sternhold,  thus  ex- 
postulates with  the  Deity  :  — 

"  Why  doost  withdraw  thy  hand  aback 
And  hide  it  in  thy  lappe  ? 
Oh,  plucke  it  out,  and  be  not  slacke 
To  give  thy  foes  a  rap !  " 

As  something  w^orthier  from  these  old  jDsalmists' 
versing,  I  give  this  of  Sternhold's  :  — 

*In  the  issue  of  Sternhold  and  Hopkins'  Psalmody  of  1549 
(one  3'ear  after  Sternhold's  death)  there  were  37  psalms  by 


BIBLE   READING.  191 

•*  The  earth  did  shake,  for  f eare  did  quake. 

The  hills  their  bases  shook 
Removed  they  were,  in  place  most  fayre 

At  God's  right  fearful  looks. 
He  rode  on  hye  and  did  so  flye 

Upon  the  Cherubins, 
He  came  in  sight,  and  made  his  flight 

Upon  the  wings  of  winds,"  etc. 

It  may  well  be  that  bluff  King  Harry  relished 
more  the  homely  Saxonism  of  such  psalms  than  the 
Stahat  3Iaters  and  Te  Deums  and  Jubilates,  which 
assuredly  would  have  better  pleased  the  Princess 
Katharine  of  Aragon.  Yet  even  at  a  time  when  the 
writers  of  such  psalmodies  received  small  crumbs 
of  favor  from  the  Court,  the  English  Bible  was  by 
no  means  a  free-goer  into  all  companies. 

"  A  nobleman  or  gentleman  may  read  it" — (I  quote  from  a 
Statute  of  Henry  VIII.'s  time) — "  in  his  house,  or  in  his  gar- 
den, or  orchard,  yet  quietly  and  without  disturbance  of  order. 
A  merchant  may  read  it  to  himself  privately  :  But  the  com- 
mon people,  women,  artificers,  apprentices,  journeymen  and 
servingmen,  are  to  be  punished  with  one  month's  imprison- 
ment, as  often  as  they  are  detected  in  reading  the  Bible, 
either  privately  or  openly. "  * 


Sternhold,  and  7  by  Hopkins.     In  subsequent  editions  more 
of  Hopkins'  work  was  added. 

*  0-4  and  35  Henry  VIII.  :   A.D.  1542-43.     The  full  text 


192  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &=  KLNGS. 

Truly  this  English  realm  was  a  strange  one  in 
those  times,  and  this  a  strange  King  —  who  has 
listened  approvingly  to  IJugh  Latimer's  sermons  — 
who  harries  Tyndale  as  he  had  harried  Tyndale's  en- 
emy —  More  ;  who  fights  the  Pope,  fights  Luther, 
holds  the  new  Bible  (even  Cranmer's)  in  leash,  who 
gives  pension  to  Sternhold,  works  easy  riddance  of 
all  the  wives  he  wishes,  pulls  down  Religious 
Houses  for  spoils,  calls  himself  Defender  of  the 
Faith,  and  maybe  goes  to  see  (if  then  on  show) 
Gammer  Gurton's  Needle*  and  is  hilariously  re- 
sponsive to  such  songs  as  this  :  — 

"I  cannot  eat  but  little  meat 
My  Stomach  is  not  good 
But  sure  I  think,  that  I  cau  drink 
With  him  that  wears  a  hood  ; 

{Statutes  of  tlie  Realm,  Vol.  III.,  pp.  895-7)  gives  some  alle- 
viating provisions  in  respect  to  "Noble  women  and  gentle 
women,  who  reade  to  themselves  ; "  and  the  same  Statute 
makes  particular  and  warning  mention  of  the  "  Craft je, 
false  and  untrue  translation  of  Tyndale. " 

*  A  coarse  comedy  written  (probably)  by  John  Still,  one 
time  Bishop  of  Bath.  Its  title  on  the  imprint  of  1575  runs 
thus:  —  '■'■A  ryght  pithy,  pleasant  and  merie  Comedy,  inty- 
tided  Oammer  Ghirton^s  Nedle  ;  played  on  the  Stage  not  longe 
ago  in  Christes  CoUedge,  in  Cambridge,  made  by  Mr,  <S., 
Master  of  Art." 


THOMAS   WYATT.  193 

Tho'  I  go  bare,  take  ye  no  care 

I  nothing  am  a  colde, 
I  stuffe  my  skin  so  full  within 

Of  jolly  good  ale  and  olde." 


Wyatt  and  Surrey. 

The  model  poets,  however,  of  this  reign  *  —  those 
who  kept  ahve  the  best  old  classic  traditions,  and 
echoed  with  most  grace  and  spirit  the  daintiness 
of  Italian  verse,  were  the  Earl  of  Surrey  and  Sir 
Thomas  Wyatt.  The  latter  was  son  of  an  old  cour- 
tier of  Henry  VTL,  and  inheritor  of  an  estate  and 
castle  in  Kent,  which  he  made  noteworthy  by  his 
decorative  treatment,  and  which  is  even  now  counted 
worthy  a  visit  by  those  journeying  through  the  little 
town  of  Maidstone.  He  was,  for  those  times,  brill- 
iantly educated  ;  was  in  high  favor  with  the  King 
(save  one  enforced  visit  to  the  Tower)  ;  he  translated 
Petrarch,  and  in  his  own  way  imitated  the  Italian 
poet's  manner,  and  was,  by  common  consent,  the 
first  to  graft  the  "  Sonnet "  upon  English  forms  of 

*  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  (or  Wyat),  b.  1503  ;  d.  1542.  The  Earl 
of  Surrey  (Henry  Howard,  and  cousin  to  Catharine  Howard, 
one  of  the  wives  of  Henry  VIII.),  b.  about  1517,  and  be- 
headed 1.547. 

13 


194  L/iNDS,   LETTERS,    &^  KINGS. 

verse.  I  find  nothing  however  in  his  verse  one-half 
so  graceful  or  gracious  as  this  tribute  to  his  worth 
in  Tennyson's  "  Queen  Mary  :  "  — 

"Courtier  of  many  courts,  he  loves  the  more 
His  own  gray  towers,  plain  life,  and  lettered  peace. 
To  read  and  rhyme  in  solitary  fields  ; 
The  lark  above,  the  nightingale  below, 
And  answer  them  in  song." 

Surrey  was  well  born  :  was  son  to  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk  who  figures  in  the  Shakespearean  play  of 
Henry  VIII.,  and  grandson  to  the  Surrey  who 
worsted  the  Scotch  on  Flodden  Field  :  he  was  com- 
panion of  the  King's  son,  was  taught  at  the  Univer- 
sities, at  home  and  abroad.  There  was  no  gallant 
more  admired  in  the  gayer  circles  of  the  court ;  he 
too  loved  Petrarch,  and  made  canzonets  like  his  ; 
had  a  Geraldine  (for  a  Laura),  half  real  and  half 
mythical.  The  further  story  once  obtained  that  he 
went  with  a  gay  retimae  to  Florence,  where  the  lists 
were  opened  —  in  the  spirit  of  an  older  chivalry  — 
to  this  Stranger  Knight,  who  challenged  the  world 
to  combat  his  claims  in  behalf  of  the  mythical 
Geraldine.  And  —  the  story  ran  —  there  were  hot- 
heads who  contended  with  him  ;  and  he  unhorsed 


SURREY.  195 

his  antagonists,  and  came  back  brimming  with  hon- 
ors, to  the  court  —  before  which  Hugh  Latimer  had 
pi-eached,  and  where  Sternhold's  psalms  had  been 
heard  —  to  be  imprisoned  for  eating  flesh  in  Lent, 
in  that  Windsor  Castle  where  he  had  often  played 
with  the  King's  son.  The  tale  *  is  a  romantic  one  ; 
but  —  in  all  that  relates  to  the  Florentine  tourney 
—  probably  untrue. 

I  give  you  a  little  taste  of  the  graceful  way  in 
which  this  poet  sings  of  his  Geraldine  :  — 

•'  I  assure  thee  even  by  oath 
And  thereon  take  my  hand  and  troth 
That  she  is  one  of  the  worthiest 
The  truest  and  the  faithfullest 
The  gentlest,  and  the  meekest  o'  mind 
That  here  on  earth  a  man  may  find  ; 
And  if  that  love  and  truth  were  gone 
In  her  it  might  be  found  alone : 
For  in  her  mind  no  thought  there  is 
But  how  she  may  be  true,  iwis, 

*  Understood  to  be  based  on  the  relations  of  a  certain 
Unfortunate  Traveller  (Jack  Wilton)  by  Nash,  1595.  The 
story  was  credited  by  Drayton,  Winstanley,  the  Athente 
Oxonienses  of  Wood  (edition  of  1721),  by  Walpole  {Noble 
Authors),  and  by  Warton  :  The  relations  spoken  of,  how- 
ever, show  anachronisms  which  forbid  their  acceptance. 


196  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &-  A'LVGS. 

And  is  thine  own  ;  and  so  she  says 
And  cares  for  thee  ten  thousand  ways  ; 
Of  thee  she  speaks,  on  thee  she  thinks 
With  thee  she  eats,  witli  thee  she  drinks 
With  tliee  she  talks,   with  thee  she  moans 
With  thee  she  sighs,  with  thee  she  groans 
With  thee  she  says—'  Farewell  mine  own  !  ' 
AVhen  thou,   God  knows,  full  far  art  gone." 

Surrey  is  to  be  held  iu  lionor  as  the  first  poet 
■who  wrote  English  blank  verse  ;  he  having  trans- 
lated two  books  of  the  ^neid  iu  that  form.  But 
this  delicate  singer,  this  gallant  soldier  cannot  al- 
together please  the  capricious  monarch  ;  perhaps 
he  is  too  fine  a  soldier  ;  perhaps  too  free  a  liver  ; 
perhaps  he  is  dangerously  befriended  by  some 
ladies  of  the  court:  Quite  certain  it  is  that  the 
King  frowns  on  him  ;  and  the  frowns  bring  what 
they  have  brought  to  so  many  others  —  first,  im- 
prisonment in  the  Tower,  and  then  the  heads- 
man's axe.  In  this  way  the  poet  died  at  thirty, 
in  1547  :  his  execution  being  one  of  the  last  or- 
dered by  Henry  VIIL,  and  the  King  so  weak  that 
he  could  only  stamp,  instead  of  signing  the  death 
warrant. 

Honest    men    l^reatlied    freer,  everywhere,  when 


ROGER  ASCHAM.  197 

the  King  died,  in  the  same  yeai'  with  Surrey :  and 
so,  that  great,  tempestuous  reign  was  ended. 

A  Boy-King^  a  Queen,  and  Schoolmaster. 

Edward  VI.  succeeded  his  father  at  the  age  of 
ten  years  —  a  precocious,  consumiDtive  boy,  who 
gave  over  his  struggle  with  Hfe  when  only  sixteen  ; 
and  yet  has  left  his  "  Works,"  printed  by  the  Rox- 
burgh Club.  There's  a  maturity  about  some  of 
the  pohtical  suggestions  in  his  "  Journal  "  — •  not 
unusual  in  a  lively  mind  prematurely  ripening  un- 
der stress  of  disease ;  yet  we  can  hardly  count  him 
a  literary  king. 

The  red  reign  of  Mary,  immediately  following, 
lasted  only  five  years,  for  which,  I  think,  all  Chris- 
tian England  thanked  God  :  In  those  five  years  very 
many  of  the  strong  men  of  whom  we  have  talked  in 
this  chapter  came  to  a  fiery  end. 

Only  one  name  of  literary  significance  do  we 
pluck  from  the  annals  of  her  time  ;  it  is  that  of 
Roger  Ascham,*  the  writer  of  her  Latin  letters,  and 

*  B.  1515  ;  d.  1568.  His  works  (in  English)  were  col- 
Jected  and  edited  by  Bennett  in  1761.     Fuller  {of  the  Wor- 


198  LANDS,   LETTERS,    «S-  KLNGS. 

for  a  considerable  time  her  secretary.  How,  being 
a  Protestant  as  he  was,  and  an  undissembling  one, 
he  kept  his  head  upon  his  shoulders  so  near  her 
throne,  it  is  hard  to  conjecture.  He  must  have 
studied  the  art  of  keeping  silence  as  well  as  the 
arts  of  speech. 

He  was  born  in  that  rich,  lovely  region  of  York- 
shire —  watered  by  the  River  Swale  —  where  we 
found  the  young  Wyclif :  his  father  M'as  a  house- 
steward  ;  but  he  early  made  show  of  such  qualities 
as  invited  the  assistance  of  rich  friends,  through 
Avhose  offices  he  was  entered  at  St.  John's  College, 
Cambridge,  at  fifteen,  and  took  his  degree  at  eigh- 
teen. He  was  full  of  American  pluck,  aptness,  and 
industry  ;  was  known  specially  for  his  large  gifts 
in  language  ;  a  superb  penman  too,  which  was  no 
little  accomplishment  in  that  day  ;  withal,  he  ex- 
celled in  athletics,  and  showed  a  skill  with  the 
long-bow  which  made  credible  the  traditions  about 
Robin  Hood.  They  said  he  wasted  time  at  this 
exercise ;  whereupon  he  wrote  a  defence  of  Archer}', 

ihies)  writes  of  Ascham :  "He  was  an  honest  man  and  a 
good  shooter.  His  ToxopJdlus  is  a  good  book  for  joung 
men  ;  his  Scholentaster  for  old  ;  his  Epistles  for  all  men." 


ROGER   AS  CHAM.  199 

which  under  the  name  of  Toxophilus  has  come 
down  to  our  day  — a  model  even  now  of  good, 
homely,  vigorous  English.  "He  that  will  write 
well  in  any  tongue,"  said  he,  "must  follow  this 
counsel  —  to  speak  as  the  common  people  do  —  to 
think  as  wise  men  do."  Our  teachers  of  rhetoric 
could  hardly  say  a  better  thing  to-day. 

The  subject  of  Archery  was  an  important  one  at 
that  period;  the  long-bow  was  still  the  principal 
war  weapon  of  offence  :  there  were  match-locks,  in- 
deed, but  these  very  cumbrous  and  countiug  for 
less  than  those  "  cloth-yard  "  shafts  which  had  won 
the  battle  of  Agin  court.  The  boy-King,  Edward,  to 
whom  Ascham  taught  penmanship,  was  an  adept  at 
archery,  and  makes  frequent  allusion  to  that  exer- 
cise in  his  Journah  In  every  hamlet  practice  at  the 
long-bow  was  obligatory  ;  and  it  was  ordered  by 
statute  that  no  person  above  the  age  of  twenty-four, 
should  shoot  the  light-flight  arrow  at  a  distance 
under  two  hundred  and  twenty  yards.  What  would 
our  Archery  Clubs  say  to  this  ?  And  what,  to  the 
further  order  —  dating  in  Henry  VIH.'s  time  —  that 
"  all  bow-staves  should  be  three  fingers  thick  and 
seven  feet  long  ?  " 


200  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &-  ALNGS. 

This  book  of  Ascham's  was  published  two  years 
before  Henry's  death,  and  brought  him  a  small  pen- 
sion ;  under  the  succeeding  king  he  went  to  Augs- 
burg, where  Charles  V.  held  his  brilliant  court ;  but 
neither  there,  nor  in  Italy,  did  he  lose  his  homely 
and  hearty  English  ways,  and  his  love  of  English 
things. 

In  his  tractate  of  the  Schoolmaster,  which  ap- 
peared after  his  death,  he  bemoans  the  much  and 
idle  travel  of  Englishmen  into  Italy.  They  have 
a  proverb  there,  he  says,  "  Un  Inglese  itallanato  e 
un  diaholo  incarnato  "  (an  Italianized  Englishman  is 
a  devil  incarnate).  Going  to  Italy,  when  Tintoretto 
and  Raphael  were  yet  living,  and  when  the  great 
Medici  family  and  the  Borgias  were  sjpinning  their 
golden  wheels  —  was,  for  a  young  Englishman  of 
that  day,  like  a  European  trip  to  a  3'oung  American 
of  ours:  Ascham  says — "Many  being  mules  and 
horses  before  they  went,  return  swine  and  asses." 

There  is  much  other  piquant  matter  in  this  old 
book  of  the  Schoobjiasier  ;  as  where  he  says  :  — 

"When  the  child  doeth  well,  either  in  the  choosing  or 
true  placing  of  his  words,  let  the  master  praise  him,  and 
say,  '  Here  ye  do  well !  '     For  I  assure  vou  there  is  no  such 


ROGER   ASCHAM.  201 

whetstone  to  sharpen  a  good  wit,  and  encourage  a  will  to 
learning  as  is  praise.  But  if  the  child  miss,  either  in  for- 
getting a  word,  or  in  changing  a  good  with  a  worse,  or  mis- 
ordering  tlie  sentence,  I  would  not  have  the  master  frown, 
or  chide  with  him,  if  the  cliild  have  done  his  diligence  and 
used  no  truantship  :  For  I  know  by  good  experience,  that  a 
child  shall  take  more  profit  of  two  faults  gently  warned  of, 
than  of  four  things  rightly  hit." 

And  this  brings  us  to  say  that  this  good,  canny, 
and  thrifty  Koger  Ascham  was  the  early  teacher,  in 
Greek  and  Latin,  of  the  great  Princess  Ehzabeth, 
and  afterward  for  years  her  secretary.  You  would 
like  to  hear  how  he  speaks  of  her  : — 

"  It  is  your  shame  (I  speak  to  you  all  young  gentlemen  of 
England)  that  one  mind  should  go  beyond  you  all  in  ex- 
cellency of  learning,  and  knowledge  of  divers  tongues. 
Point  forth  six  of  the  best  given  gentlemen  of  this  court, 
and  all  they  together  show  not  so  much  good  will,  spend 
not  so  much  time,  bestow  not  so  many  hours  daily,  orderly, 
and  constantly,  for  the  increase  of  learning  and  knowledge 
as  doth  this  Princess.  Yea,  I  believe  that  beside  her 
perfect  readiness  in  Latin,  Italian,  French  and  Spanish,  she 
readeth  here  now,  at  Windsor  more  Greek  every  day,  than 
some  prebendarys  of  this  Church  doth  read  Latin  in  a  whole 
week." 

He  never  speaks  of  her  but  with  a  hearty  tender- 
ness ;  nor  did  she  speak  of  him,  but  most  kindly. 


202  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &-  AVAGS. 

At  Lis  death,  she  said,  "She  would  rather  that 
£10,000  had  been  fluug  into  the  sea."  And  —  see- 
ing her  money -loving,  this  was  very  much  for  her 
to  say.  ' 

In  our  next  chapter  we  shall  meet  this  prudent 
and  accomplished  Princess  face  to  face  —  in  her  far- 
thingale and  ruff —  with  the  jewels  on  her  fingers, 
and  the  crown  upon  her  head — bearing  herself 
right  royally.  And  around  her  we  shall  find  such 
staid  worthies  as  Burleigh  and  Kichard  Hooker ; 
and  such  bright  spirits  as  Sidney  and  Ealeigh,  and 
that  sweet  poet  Spenser,  who  was  in  that  day  count- 
ing the  flowing  measures  of  that  long  song,  whose 
mellow  cadences  have  floated  musically  down  from 
the  far  days  of  Elizabeth  to  these  fairer  days  of 
ours. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

IN  our  last  talk  we  entered  upon  that  brilliant 
sixteenth  century,  within  whose  first  quarter 
three  great  kings  held  three  great  thrones  : — Charles 
V.  of  Spain,  Francis  I.  of  France,  and  Henry  VHI, 
of  England.  New  questions  Avere  astir;  Art — in 
the  seats  of  Art  —  was  blazing  at  its  best :  the  recent 
fall  of  Constantinople  under  the  Turk  had  sent  a 
tide  of  Greek  scholars,  Greek  art,  and  Greek  letters 
flowing  over  Western  Europe,  and  drifting  into  the 
antiquated  courts  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  1 
spoke  of  the  magnificent  Wolsey,  and  of  his  great 
university  endowments  ;  also,  of  that  ripe  scholar, 
Sir  Thomas  More,  who  could  not  mate  his  religion,  or 
his  statesmanship  with  the  caprices  of  the  King,  and 
so,  died  by  the  axe.  We  saw  Cranmer  —  meaning 
to  be  good,  if  goodness  did  not  call  for  strength  ; 
we  heard  Latimer's  swift,  homely  speech,  and  saw 


204  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &-  KINGS. 

Tyndale  with  his  EngHsh  Testament  —  both  these 
coming  to  grief  ;  and  we  had  gHmpses  of  John  Knox 
shaking  the  pulpit  with  his  frail  hand,  and  shaking 
all  Scotch  Christendom  with  his  fearless,  strident 
speech. 

We  heard  the  quaint  psalmody  of  Sternhold,  and 
the  sweeter  and  more  heathen  verse  of  Wyatt  and 
of  Surrey  ;  lastly,  I  gave  a  sketch  of  that  old  school- 
master, Roger  Ascham,  who  by  his  life,  tied  the 
reigns  of  Henry  and  of  Elizabeth  together,  and  who 
taught  Greek  and  Latin  and  penmanship  and 
Archery  to  that  proud  princess  — whom  w^e  en- 
counter now  —  in  her  high  ruff,  and  her  piled-up 
head-dress,  with  a  fair  jewelled  hand  that  puts  a 
man's  grip  upon  the  sceptre. 

Elizabethan  England. 

Elizabeth  was  in  her  twentieth  year  when  she 
came  to  the  throne,  and  it  was  about  the  middle  of 
the  sixteenth  century  ;  the  precise  year  being  1558. 
The  England  she  was  to  dominate  so  splendidly  was 
not  a  quiet  England  :  the  fierce  religious  controver- 
sies which  had  signalized  the  reign  of  Henry  VHI.  — 
who  thwacked  with  his  kingly  bludgeon  both  ways 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND.  205 

and  all  waj's  —  and  which  continued  under  Edward 
VL  —  who  was.  feebly  Protestant ;  and  which  had 
caught  new  vigor  under  Mary  —  who  was  arrant 
and  slavish  Papist  —  had  left  gouts  of  blood  and  a 
dreadful  exasperation.  Those  great  Religious 
Houses,  which  only  a  quarter  of  a  century  before, 
were  pleasantly  embayed  in  so  many  charming  val- 
leys of  Great  Britain  —  with  their  writing-rooms, 
their  busy  transcribing  clerks  —  their  great  gardens, 
were,  most  of  them,  despoiled  —  and  to  be  seen  no 
more.  An  old  Venetian  Ambassador,*  writing  to 
the  Seigneury  in  those  days,  says —  "  London  itself  is 
disfigured  by  the  ruins  of  a  multitude  of  Churches 
and  Monasteries  which  once  belonged  to  Friars  and 
Nuns."  Piers  Plowman,  long  before,  had  attacked 
the  sins  growing  uj)  in  the  pleasant  Abbey  Courts  ; 
Chaucer  had  echoed  the  ridicule  in  his  Abbot  riding 
to  Canterbury,  with  jingling  trappings  :  Gower  had 
repeated  the  assault  in  his  Vox  Clmnantis,  and  Skel- 
ton  had  turned  his  ragged  rhymes  into  the  same 
cuiTent  of  satire.     But  all  would  have  availed  noth- 

*  Report  of  Giacomo  Soranzo  (Venetian  Ambassador)  un- 
der date  of  1554  :  Rawdon  Brown's  Calendar  State  Papers, 
1534-54. 


2o6  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &^  A'/A'GS 

ing  except  the  arrogant  Henry  Viil.  had  set  his  foot 
upon  thera,  and  crushed  them  out. 

There  was  a  wild  justice  in  it  —  if  not  an  orderly 
one.  The  spoils  went  to  fill  the  Royal  coffers ; 
many  of  those  beautiful  properties  were  bestowed 
upon  favorites  ;  many  princely  estates  are  still  held 
in  England,  by  title  tracing  back  to  those  days  of 
spoliation  —  a  fact  which  will  be  called  to  mind, 
I  suspect  —  with  unction,  in  case  of  any  great  so- 
cial revolution  in  that  countr}'.  Under  Mary,  some 
of  these  estates  had  been  restored  to  Church  dig- 
nitaries ;  but  the  restoration  had  not  been  gen- 
eral :  and  Elizabeth  could  not  if  she  would,  and 
would  not  if  she  could,  sanction  any  further  restitu- 
tion. 

She  was  Protestant  —  but  rather  from  policy  than 
any  heartiness  of  belief.  It  did  not  grieve  her  one 
whit,  that  her  teacher,  Roger  Ascham,  had  been 
private  secretary  to  bloody  Mary  :  the  lukewarmness 
of  her  great  minister,  Lord  Burleigh,  did  not  dis- 
turb her  ;  she  always  kept  wax  tapers  burning  by  a 
crucifix  in  her  private  chamber ;  a  pretty  rosary 
gave  her  no  shock  ;  but  she  ivas  shocked  at  the 
marriage  of  any  member  of  the  priesthood,  always. 


QUEEN  ELIZABETH.  207 

In  fact,  if  Spanish  bigotry  had  not  forced  her  into 
a  resolute  antagonism  of  Kome,  I  think  history 
would  have  been  in  doubt  whether  to  count  her 
most  a  Lutheran,  or  most  a  Roman. 

Yet  she  made  the  Papists  smoke  for  it  —  as  grim- 
ly as  ever  her  sister  Mary  did  the  Protestants  —  if 
they  stood  one  whit  in  the  way  of  England's  grasp 
on  power. 

Personality  of  the  Queen. 

I  think  our  friend  Mr.  Froude,  whose  history 
we  all  read,  is  a  little  unfair  toward  Queen  Bess, 
as  he  was  a  little  over-fair,  and  white-wash-i-ly  dis- 
posed in  the  case  of  Henry  VIII.  :  both  tendencies 
being  attributable  to  a  mania  this  shrewd  histo- 
rian has  —  for  unripping  and  oversetting  established 
forms  of  belief.  I  think  that  he  not  only  bears 
with  a  greedy  zeal  upon  her  too  commonly  manifest 
selfishness  and  heartlessness,  but  that  he  enjoys 
putting  little  vicious  dabs  of  bad  color  upon  her 
picture  —  as  when  he  says,  "  she  spat,  and  swore 
like  a  trooper."  Indeed  it  would  seem  that  this 
clever  biographer  had  carried  a  good  d,eal  of  his 
fondness    for    "vicious    dabs"  in  portraiture    into 


2o8  LANDS,   LETTERS.   &'  /x'LVCS. 

bis  more  recent  post-mortem  exhibits ;  as  if  it  were 
his  duty  and  jDleasure  to  hang  out  all  sorts  of 
soiled  linen,  in  his  office  of  Clean-Scrubber :  Yet,  I 
wish  to  speak  with  all  respect  of  the  distinguished 
historian  —  whose  vigor  is  conspicuous  —  whose  in- 
dustry is  remarkable,  whose  crisp  sentences  are 
delightful,  but  whose  accuracy  is  not  of  the  surest ; 
and  whose  conscience  does,  I  think,  sometimes  go 
lame  —  under  strain  of  his  high,  rhetorical  canter. 

The  authority  for  all  most  damnatory  statements 
with  respect  to  the  private  life  of  the  Queen,  rests 
upon  those  Spanish  Relations  —  so  minute  as  to  be 
suspicious  —  if  they  were  not  also  so  savagely  bitter 
as  to  twist  everything  to  the  discredit  of  the  Prot- 
estant Sovereign.  Signor  Soranzo  —  the  Venetian 
ambassador  (whom  Froude  does  not  cite  —  but 
who  had  equal  opportunities  of  observation  with 
the  Spanish  informer),  says  of  Elizabeth  (in  a 
report  —  not  written  for  publication,  but  lying 
for  years  in  the  archives  of  Venice) :  "  Such  an 
air  of  dignified  majesty  pervades  all  her  actions 
that  no  one  can  fail  to  judge  her  a  queen.  She 
is  a  good  Greek  and  Latin  scholar  ;  and  beside 
her     native     tongue     she     speaks    Latin,    French, 


QUE  EX  ELIZABETH.  209 

Spanish,  and  Italian  benissimo  —  and  her  manners 
are  very  modest  and  affable."  * 

I  talk  thus  much  —  and  may  talk  more — about  the 
personality  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  because  she  must  be 
counted — in  a  certain  not  vei'y  remote  sense  —  one 
of  the  forces  that  went  to  endow  what  is  called 
the  English  Literature  of  her  day  —  so  instructed 
was  she  ;  so  full  of  talent  ;  so  keen-sighted  ;  so  ex- 
act  —  a  most  extraordinar'y  woman.  "We  must  not 
think  her  greatness  was  factitious,  and  attributable 
to  her  only  because  she  was  a  queen.  There  could 
be  no  greater  mistake.  She  would  have  been  great 
if  she  had  been  a  shoemaker's  daughter  ;  I  do  not 
mean  that  she  would  have  rode  a  white  horse  at 
Tilbury,  and  made  the  nations  shake  :  but  she 
would  have  bound  more  shoes,  and  bound  them 
better,  and  looked  sharper  after  the  affairs  of  her 
household  than  any  cobbler's  Avife  in  the  land. 
Elizabeth  would  have  made  a  ■svonderful  post-mis^ 
tress  —  a  splendid  head  of  a  school  —  with  perhaps 
a  little  too  large  use  of  the  ferule  :  and  she  would 
have   had   her   favorites,    and    shown    it ;   but   she 


*Rawdon  Brown's   Calendar  State   Papei-s,  1554.     From 
Venetian  Archives. 
U 


2IO  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &>  A'LVGS. 

would  have  lifted  her  pupils'  thoughts  into  a  high 
range  of  endeavor  ;  she  would  have  made  an  at- 
mosphere of  intellectual  ambition  about  her  ;  she 
■would  have  struck  fire  from  flinty  souls  ;  and  so 
she  did  in  her  court :  She  inspired  work  —  inspired 
imagination ;  may  we  not  say  that  she  inspired 
genius.  That  auburn  hair  of  hers  (I  suppose  we 
should  have  called  it  i-ed,  if  her  name  had  been 
Abigail)  made  an  aureole,  around  which  wit  corus- 
cated by  a  kind  of  electric  affinity.  It  was  counted 
worth  toil  to  have  the  honor  of  laying  a  jDoem  at  her 
gracious  feet,  who  was  so  royally  a  Queen  —  whose 
life,  and  power,  and  will  and  culture,  made  up  a 
quadrature  of  poems. 

Burleigh  and  Others. 

And  who  was  there  of  literary  significance  about 

Elizabeth  in  those  early  days  of  her  reign  ?     Roger 

Ascham  was  still  doling  out  his  sagacious  talk,  and 

his  good  precepts  ;  but  he  was  not  a  force  —  only 

what  we  might  call  a  good  creature.     There  was 

Sackville  *  (afterward  the  elegant  Earl  of  Dorset)  ; 

*  Thomas  Sackville,  b.  1527  ;  d.  1608,  was  author  of  por- 
tion of  Mii-rorfor  Magistrates;  also  associated  witli  Thomas 
Norton,  in  production  of  the  Tragedy  of  Oorhoduc. 


SACKVJLLE.  211 

he  was  in  his  prime  then,  and  had  very  likely 
written  his  portion  of  the  Mirror  for  3Iagistrates 
—  a  fairish  poetic  history  of  great  unfortunate 
people  —  completed  afterward  by  other  poets,  but 
hardly  read  nowadays. 

Old  Tusser,*  too — the  farmer-poet  —  lived  in 
these  times ;  an  Essex  man,  of  about  the  same  age 
as  Ascham,  but  who  probably  never  came  nearer  to 
the  court  than  to  sing  in  the  choir  of  old  St.  Paul's. 
He  had  University  experience,  which,  if  it  did  not 
help  his  farming,  on  the  banks  of  the  Stour,  did, 
doubtless,  enable  him  to  equip  his  somewhat  prosy 
poems  with  such  classic  authentication  and  such 
directness  and  simplicities  as  gave  to  his  Pointes  of 
Ilushandrie  very  great  vogue.  Many  rhyming  saws 
about  farming,  still  current  among  old-fashioned 
countr^'-folk,  trace  back  to  Master  Tusser,  who  lived 
and  farmed  successively  (tradition  says  not  very  suc- 
cessfully) at  Ipswich,  Dereham,  and  Norwich,  His 
will,  however,  published  in  these  later  times,  shows 
him  to  have  been  a  man  of  considerable  means. 

Then    there  was   Holinshed,  f  who,    though   the 

*  Thomas  Tusser,  b.  about  1527  ;  d.  1580. 
f  Eaphael  Holinshed,  d.  about  1580.     First  edition  of  his 
Chronicle  was  published  in  1577. 


2  12  I.AXDS,   LETTERS,    &-   /C/.yc7S. 

date  of  his  birth  is  uncertain,  must  have  beeu  of 
fair  working  age  now  —  a  homely,  honest,  simple- 
hearted  chronicler  (somewhat  thievish,  as  all  the 
old  chroniclers  were)  but  whose  name  is  specially 
worth  keeping  in  mind,  because  he  —  in  all  jirob- 
ability  —  sui^plied  Shakespeare's  principal  historic 
reading,  and  furnished  the  crude  material,  after- 
ward beaten  out  into  those  plaques  of  gold,  which 
we  call  Shakespeare's  Historic  Plays.  Therefore,  we 
must  always,  I  think,  treat  Holinshed  with  respect. 
Next,  there  was  the  great  Lord  Burleigh,*  the  chief 
minister  and  adviser  of  the  Queen  —  whom  she  set 
great  store  by  :  the  only  man  she  allowed  to  sit  in 
her  presence  ;  and  indeed  he  was  something  heavy, 
both  in  mind  and  in  person  ;  but  far-sighted,  hon- 
est, keen,  cautious,  timid  —  making  his  nod  count 
more  than  most  men's  words,  and  in  great  exi- 
gencies standing  up  for  the  right,  even  against  the 
caprices  of  the  sovereign.  Whoever  goes  to  Stam- 
ford in  England  should  not  fail  to  run  out  —  a  mile 
away  only  —  to  the  princely  place  called  Burleigh 
House  (now  the  property  of  the  Marquis  of  Exeter) 

*  William  Cecil,  b.  1520  ;  d.  1598.     Biography  by  Narea, 
1828-31. 


BURLEIGH.  213 

which  was  the  home  of  this  minister  of  EHzabeth's 

—  built  out  of  his  savings,  and  equipped  now  with 
such  paintings,  such  gardens,  such  magnificent 
avenues  of  oak,  such  great  sweeps  of  velvet  lawn, 
such  herds  of  loitering  deer  as  make  it  one  of  the 
show-places  of  England.  Well  —  this  sober-sided, 
cautious  Burleigh  (you  will  get  a  short,  but  good 
glimpse  of  him  in  Scott's  tragic  tale  of  Kenilworth) 
wrote  a  book  —  a  sort  of  earlier  Chesterfield's 
Letters,  made  up  of  advices  for  his  son  Eobert 
Cecil,  who  was  cousin,  and  in  early  life,  rival  of  the 
great  Francis  Bacon.  I  will  take  out  a  tid-bit  from 
this  book,  that  you  may  see  how  this  famous  Lord 
Burleigh  talked  to  his  son  : 

"  AVhen  it  shall  please  God  to  bring  thee  to  man's  estate" 

—  he  says —  "  nse  great  Providence,  and  circumspection  in 
choosing  thy  wife  :  For  from  thence  will  spring  all  thy 
future  good  and  evil.  And  it  is  an  action  of  life — like  unto 
a  stratagem  of  War,  wherein  a  man  can  err  but  once.  If 
thy  estate  be  good,  match  near  home  and  at  leisure:  if 
weak  —  far  off,  and  quickly.  Inquire  diligently  of  her  di.s- 
position,  and  how  her  parents  have  been  inclined  in  their 
youth.  Choose  not  a  base,  and  uncomely  creature,  alto- 
gether for  Wealth  ;  for  it  will  cause  contempt  in  others,  and 
loathing  in  thee  :  Neither  make  choice  of  a  fool,  for  she 
will  be  thy  continual  disgrace,  and  it  will  irk  thee  to  hear 
her  talk." 


214  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-'  A'LYGS. 

A  Grouj)  of  Great  Names. 

But  the  greater  names  which  went  to  ilhistrate 
with  their  splendor  the  times  of  Elizabeth,  only  be- 
gan to  come  to  people's  knowledge  after  she  had 
been  upon  the  throne  some  twenty  years. 

Spenser  was  a  boy  of  five,  when  she  came 
to  power :  John  Lilly,  the  author  of  Euphues 
which  has  given  us  the  word  euphuistic,  and  which 
pi-ovoked  abundant  caricatures,  of  more  or  less  fair- 
ness —  was  born  the  same  year  with  Spenser ;  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  a  year  later;  Sir  Walter  Kaleigh 
a  year  earlier  (1553)  ;  Kichard  Hooker,  the  author 
of  the  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  in  1554  ;  Lord  Bacon 
in  1561  ;  Shakespeare  in  1504.  These  are  great 
names  to  stand  so  thickly  sti'ewed  over  ten  or 
twelve  years  of  time.  I  do  not  name  them,  be- 
cause I  lay  great  stress  on  special  dates :  For  my 
own  part,  I  find  them  hard  things  to  keep  in  mind 
—  except  I  group  them  thus  —  and  I  think  a  man  or 
woman  can  work  and  worry  at  worthier  particiilar- 
ities  than  these.  But  when  Elizabeth  had  been 
twenty  years  a  Queen,  and  was  in  the  prime  of  her 
womanly  powers  —  six  years  after  the  slaughter  of 


RICHARD  HOOKER.  215 

St.  Bartholomew  —  wheu  the  first  English  colony 
had  just  been  planted  in  Virginia,  and  Sir  Francis 
Drake  was  coasting  up  and  down  the  shores  of  Cal- 
ifornia ;  when  Shakespeare  was  but  a  lad  of  four- 
teen, and  poaching  (if  he  ever  did  poach  there  — 
which  is  doubtful)  iu  Charlecote  Park  ;  when  Fran- 
cis Bacon  was  seventeen,  and  was  studying  in  Paris 

—  Philip  Sidney  was  twenty-four  ;  in  the  ripeness 
of  his  young  manhood,  and  just  returned  from 
Holland,  he  was  making  love — vainly  as  it  proved 

—  to  the  famous  and  the  ill-fated  Penelope  Deve- 
reaux. 

Richard  Hooker  —  of  the  same  age,  was  teaching 
Hebrew  in  the  University  of  Oxford,  and  had  not  yet 
made  that  unfortunate  London  marriage  (tho'  very 
near  it)  by  which  he  was  yoked  with  one  whom  old 
Izaak  Walton  —  charitable  as  the  old  angler  was  — 
describes  as  a  silly,  clownish  woman,  and  withal  a 
perfect  Xantippe. 

The  circumstances  which  led  to  this  awkward 
marriage  show  so  well  the  child-like  simplicity  of 
this  excellent  man,  that  they  are  worth  noting. 
He  had  come  up  to  London,  and  was  housed 
where   preachers   were  wont  to  go ;  and   it  being 


2i6  LANDS,  LETTERS,   3t-  A'LVCS. 

foul  weather,  and  he  thoroughly  wetted,  was  be- 
hoven  to  the  hostess  for  diy  clothes,  and  such 
other  attentions  as  made  him  look  upon  her  as  a 
special  Providence,  who  could  advise  and  care  for 
him  in  all  things  :  So,  he  accepted  her  proffer  to 
him  of  her  own  daughter,  who  proved  to  him  quite 
another  sort  of  Providence,  and  a  grievous  thorn  in 
the  side  ;  and  when  his  friends,  on  "visits  to  his 
homestead  in  after  years,  found  the  author  of  the 
Ecclesiastical  I^olily  —  rocking  the  cradle,  or  mind- 
ing the  sheep,  or  looking  after  the  kettles,  and  ex- 
pressed sympathy  —  "  My  dear  fellows,"  said  he  — 
"  if  Saints  have  usually  a  double  share  in  the  mis- 
eries of  this  Life,  I,  that  am  none,  ought  not  to  re- 
pine at  what  my  Wise  Creator  hath  ajopointed  for 
me,  but  labor  (as  indeed  I  do  daily)  to  submit  mine 
to  his  will  and  possess  my  soul  in  patience  and 
peace." 

I  don't  know  if  any  of  our  parish  will  care  to  read 
the  Ecclesiastical  Polity ;  but  if  you  have  courage 
thereto,  you  will  find  in  this  old  master  of  sound 
and  cumbrous  English  prose,  passages  of  rare  elo- 
quence, and  many  turns  of  expression,  which  for 
their  wiilning  grace,  their  aptitude,  their  quality  of 


EDMUA'D   SPENSER.  217 

fastening  tliemselves  upon  the  mind,  are  not  over- 
matcbed  by  those  of  any  Elizabethan  writer.  His 
theology  is  old  and  rankly  conservative ;  but  he 
shows  throughout  a  beautiful  reverence  for  that 
all-embracing  Law,  "  whose  seat  (as  he  says)  is  the 
Bosom  of  God,  and  whose  voice  is  the  Harmony 
of  the  World."* 

Edmund  Spenser. 

As  for  Edmund  Spenser,  he  was  a  year  older  at 
this  date  —  twenty-five  :  he  had  taken  his  master's 
degree  at  Cambridge  and  had  just  returned  to 
London  from  a  visit  to  the  North  of  England, 
where  he  had  encountered  some  fair  damsel  to 
whom  he  had  been  paying  weary  and  vain  suit, 
and  whom  he  had  embalmed  in  his  She^oherd's 
Calendar  (just  then  being  made  ready  for  the  press) 
under  the  name  of  Rosalind. 

"Ah,  faithless  Rosalind,  and  voyd  of  grace, 
That  art  the  root  of  all  this  ruthful  woe 
[My]  teares  would  make  the  hardest  flint  to  flow  ; " 

*  Richard  Hooker  (1553-1600).  Edition  of  his  works  (by 
Keble)  first  appeared  1836.  First  book  of  Laws  of  Ecclesi- 
astical Polity  has  been  edited  for  Clarendon  Press  Series 
by  R.  W.  Church,  1868. 


2i8  LANDS,  LETTERS,  6-  KINGS. 

and  his  tears  keep  a-drip  through  a  great  many  of 
those  charming  eclogues  —  called  the  Shephei'd's 
Calendar.  Some  of  the  commentators  on  Spenser 
have  queried  —  gravely  —  whether  he  ever  forgot 
this  Rosalind  ;  and  whether  the  occurrence  of  the 
name  and  certain  woe-worn  words  in  some  mad- 
rigal of  later  years  did  not  show  a  wound  unhealed 
and  bleeding.  We  are  all  at  liberty  to  guess,  and 
I  am  inclined  to  doubt  here.  I  think  he  was  equal 
to  forgetting  this  Rosalind  before  the  ink  of  the 
Shepherd's  Calendar  was  fairly  dry.  He  loved 
dreams  and  fed  on  dreams  ;  and  I  suspect  enjoyed 
the  dream  of  his  woe  more  than  he  ever  suffered 
from  a  sting  of  rebuflf. 

Indeed,  much  as  we  must  all  admire  his  poetic 
fervor  and  fancies,  I  do  not  find  in  him  traces  of  he- 
roic mould  ;  —  easily  friendly  rather  than  firmly 
so ;  —  full  of  an  effusive  piety,  but  not  coming  in 
Avay  of  martyrdom  for  faith's  sake  ;  —  a  tenderly 
contemplative  man,  loving  and  sensing  beauty  in 
the  same  sure  and  abounding  way  in  which  Turner 
has  sense  of  color  —  exhaustless  in  his  stock  of  bril- 
liant and  ingenious  imagery  —  running  to  similes  as 
mountain  rills  run  to   rivers  ;   a  coiartier  withal  — • 


EDMUND   SPENSER.  219 

honeyed  and  sometimes  fulsome  ;  a  richly  present- 
able man  (if  portraits  may  be  trusted),  with  a  well- 
trimmed  face,  a  cautious  face  —  dare  I  say  —  almost 
a  smirking  face  ;  —  the  face  of  a  self-contained  man 
who  thinks  allowably  well  of  his  parts,  and  is  deter- 
mined to  make  the  most  of  them.  And  in  the 
brows  over  the  fine  eyes  there  is  a  bulging  out  — 
where  i^hrenologists  j^lace  the  bump  of  language  — 
that  shows  where  his  forte  lies  :  No  such  word-mas- 
ter had  been  heard  to  sing  since  the  days  when 
Chaucer  sung.  He  is  deeply  read  in  Chaucer  too ; 
and  read  in  all  —  worth  reading  —  who  came  be- 
tween. His  lingual  aptitudes  are  amazing.  He  can 
tear  words  in  tatters,  and  he  can  string  them  rhyth- 
mically in  all  shapes  ;  he  makes  his  own  law  in  lan- 
guage, as  he  grows  heated  in  his  work  ;  twists  old 
phrases  out  of  shape ;  makes  new  ones  ;  binds  them 
together  ;  tosses  them  as  he  wiU  to  the  changing 
level  of  his  thought :  so  that  whereas  one  may  go  to 
Chaucer,  in  points  of  language,  as  to  an  authority 

—  one  goes  to  Spenser  as  to  a  mine  of  graceful  and 
euphonious  phrases  :    but  the  authority  is  wanting 

—  or,  at  least,  is  not  so  safe.  He  makes  uses  for 
words  which  no   analogy   and  no  good    order  can 


220  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  A'LVGS. 

recognize.  And  his  new  words  are  not  so  much  the 
product  of  keen,  shrewd  search  after  what  will 
fullest  and  strongest  express  a  feeling  or  a  thought, 
or  give  color  to  epithet,  as  they  are  the  luxuri- 
ant outcropping  of  a  tropical  genius  for  language, 
■which  delights  in  abundant  forms,  and  makes  them 
with  an  easy  show  of  its  own  fecundity,  or  for  the 
chance  purpose  of  filling  a  line,  or  meting  out  the 
bounds  of  an  orderly  prosody. 

He  came  up  to  London,  as  I  said,  about  the  year 
1578,  at  the  invitation  of  a  prig  of  a  classmate,  who 
makes  him  known  to  Philip  Sidney  :  Sidney  is  the 
very  man  to  recognize  and  appreciate  the  tender 
beauty  of  those  woful  j^laints  in  the  Shepherd's  Cal- 
endar, and  invites  the  poet  down  to  Penshurst,  that 
charming  home  of  the  Sidneys,  in  Kent.  There, 
such  interest  is  made  for  him  that  he  is  appointed 
to  a  secretaryship  in  Ireland,  where  the  Queen's 
lieutenants  are  stamping  out  revolt.  Spenser  sees 
much  of  this  fiery  work ;  and  its  blaze  reddens  some 
of  the  pages  of  the  Faery  Queen.  In  the  distribu- 
tion of  spoils,  after  the  Irish  revolt  was  put  down, 
the  poet  has  bestowed  upon  him,  amongst  other 
plums,   some  three   thousand  acres   of   wild   land. 


THE  FAERY  QUEEN.  221 

with  Kilcolman  Castle,  which  stands  upon  a  valley 
spur  of  this  domain.  This  castle  is  represented 
as  an  uninteresting  fortress  —  like  Johnnie  Arm- 
strong's tower  in  Scotland — upon  the  borders  of 
a  small  lake  or  mei'e,  and  the  landscape  —  stretch- 
ing in  unlovely  waste  around  it  —  savage  and  low 
and  tame.  Yet  he  finds  rich  rural  pictures  there 
—  this  idealist  and  dreamer:  let  him  see  only  so 
much  of  sky  as  comes  between  the  roofs  of  a  city 
alley,  and  he  will  pluck  out  of  it  a  multitude  of 
twinkhng  stars  ;  let  him  look  upon  a  rood  square 
of  brown  grass-land,  and  he  will  set  it  alight  with 
SGOX'es  of  daisies  and  of  primroses. 

The  Faery  Queen. 

And  it  is  in  this  easy  way  he  plants  the  men  and 
women,  the  hags  and  demons,  the  wizards  and  dra- 
gons that  figure  in  the  phantasmagoria  of  the  Faery 
Queen ;  they  come  and  go  like  twilight  shadoAvs ; 
they  have  no  root  of  realism. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  first  cantos  of 
this  poem  were  blocked  out  in  his  mind  before 
leaving  England ;  perhaps  the  scheme  had  been 
talked  over  with  his  friend  Sidney  ;  in  any  event,  it 


222  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &^  KL\'CS. 

is  quite  certain  that  they  underwent  elaboration  at 
Kilcolraaii  Castle,  and  some  portions  doubtless  took 
color  from  the  di-eary  days  of  rapine  and  of  war  he 
saw  there.  I  will  not  ask  if  you  have  read  the 
Faery  Queen:  I  fear  that  a  great  many  dishonest 
speeches  are  made  on  that  score  ;  I  am  afraid  that  I 
equivocated  myself  in  youngish  days  ;  but  now  I 
will  be  honest  in  saying  —  I  never  read  it  through 
continuously  and  of  set  purpose  ;  I  have  ti'ied  it — ■ 
on  winter  nights,  and  gone  to  sleep  in  my  chair  :  I 
have  tried  it,  under  trees  in  summer,  and  have  gone 
to  sleep  on  the  turf :  I  have  tried  it,  in  the  first 
blush  of  a  spring  morning,  and  have  gone  —  to 
breakfast. 

Yet  there  are  many  who  enjoy  it  intensely  and 
continuously  :  Mx.  Saintsbury  says,  courageously, 
that  it  is  the  only  long  poem  he  honestly  wishes 
were  longer.  It  is  certainly  full  of  idealism  ;  it  is 
full  of  sweet  fancies  ;  it  is  rich  in  dragonly  horrors  ; 
it  is  crammed  with  exquisite  harmonies.  But  —  its 
tenderer  heroines  are  so  shadowy,  you  cannot  bind 
them  to  your  heart ;  nay,  you  can  scarce  follow  them 
with  your  eyes :  Now,  you  catch  a  strain  which 
seems  to  carrv  a  sweet  womanlv  imajre  of  flesh  and 


THE  FAERY  QUEEN.  223 

blood  —  of  heartiness  and  warmth.  But — at  the 
turning  of  a  page  —  his  wealth  of  words  so  en- 
wraps her  in  glowing  epithets,  that  she  fades  on 
your  vision  to  a  mere  iridescence  and  a  creature 
of  Cloud-land, 

"  Her  face  so  faire,  as  flesh  it  seemed  not. 
But  Heavenly  Portrait  of  bright  angels  hew, 

Clear  as  the  skye,  withouteu  blame  or  blot 
Thro'  goodly  mixture  of  Complexion's  dew  ! 

And  in  her  cheeks,  the  Vermeil  red  did  shew, 
Like  Roses  in  a  bed  of  Lillies  shed, 

The  which  ambrosial  odors  from  them  threw, 
And  gazers  sense,  with  double  pleasure  fed, 

Hable  to  heal  the  sick,  and  to  revive  the  dead  ! 

"  In  her  faire  eyes  two  living  lamps  did  flame 
Kindled  above  at  the  Heavenly  Makers  Light, 

And  darted  fiery  beams  out  of  the  same 
So  passing  persant  and  so  wondrous  bright. 

That  quite  bereaved  the  rash  beholders  sight. 
In  them  the  blinded  God  —  his  lustful  fire 

To  kindle  —  oft  assay'd,  but  had  no  might, 
For  with  dred  Majesty,  and  awful  ire 

She  broke  his  wanton  darts,  and  quenched  base  desire  I 

"  Upon  her  eyelids  many  Graces  sate 
Under  the  shadow  of  her  even  brows, 

Working  Belgardes  and  amorous  Retrate  , 
And  everie  one  her  with  a  grace  endows, 


224  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  E/NGS. 

And  everie  one,  with  meekness  to  her  bowes  ; 
So  glorious  mirror  of  Celestial  Grace 

And  soveraigne  moniment  of  mortal  vowes, 
IIow  shall  frail  pen  describe  her  Heavenly  face 

For  feare  —  thro'  want  of  skill,  her  beauty  to  disgrace  ? 

"  So  faire,  and  thousand  times  more  faire 
She  seem'd  —  when  she,  presented  was,  to  sight. 

And  was  y-clad,  for  heat  of  scorching  aire 
All  in  a  silken  Camus,  lilly  white, 

Turfled  upon,  with  many  a  folded  plight 
Which  all  above  besprinkled  was  throughout 

With  golden  Aygulets,  that  glistered  bright 
Like  twinckling  starres,  and  all  the  skirt  about 

Was  hemmed  with  golden  fringe,     ..." 

and  so  ou,  by  dozens,  by  scores,  by  hundreds  — 
delicate,  mellifluous  stanzas  —  fair  ladies  and  brazen- 
scaled  dragons,  lions  and  fleecy  lambs,  sweet  purl- 
ing brooks  and  horrors  of  Pandemonium,  story 
grafted  upon  story,  and  dreams  grafted  upon  these, 
and  still  flowing  on  —  canto  after  canto  —  until  the 
worldlings  are  tempted  to  exclaim,  "  When  will  he 
stop?"  It  is  an  exclamation  that  a  good  many 
lesser  men  than  Spenser  have  tempted  —  in  class- 
rooms, in  lecture-rooms,  and  in  pvilpits.  And  I 
am  wicked  enough  to  think  that  if  a  third  had 
been  shorn  away  by  the  poet  fi'om  that  over-full. 


THE  FAERY  QUEEN.  225 

and  over-epitbetecl  poem  of  the  Faery  Queen,  it 
would  liave  reached  farther,  and  come  nearer  to 
more  minds  and  hearts.  But  who  —  save  the 
master  —  shall  ever  put  the  shears  into  that  dainty 
broidery  where  gorgeous  flowers  lie  enmeshed  in 
page-long  tangles,  and  where  wanton  tendrils  of 
Avords  enlace  and  tie  together  whole  platoons  of 
verse  ? 

In  brief,  the  Poem  is  a  great,  cumbrous,  beau- 
tiful, bewildei'ing,  meandering  Allegory,  in  which 
he  assigns  to  every  Virtue  a  Knight  to  be  ensam- 
pler  and  defender  of  the  same,  and  puts  these 
Knights  to  battle  with  all  the  vices  represented  by 
elfin  hags,  or  scaled  dragons,  or  beautiful  women  ; 
and  so  the  battles  rage  and  the  storms  beat.  But 
we  lose  sight  of  his  moral  in  the  smoke  of  the  con- 
flict. The  skeleton  of  his  ethics  is  overlaid  with 
the  wallets  of  fair  flesh,  and  with  splendid  trap- 
pings ;  his  abounding  figures  gallop  away  with 
the  logic  ;  his  roses  cumber  all  his  corn-ground. 
There  are  no  passages  of  condensed  meaning,  or 
of  wondrous  intuition  that  give  one  pause,  and  that 
stick  by  us  like  a  burr.  There  is  a  symphonious 
clatter  of  hammers  upon  golden-headed  tacks,  but 


226  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  k'LXGS. 

no  such  pounding  blow  as  drives  a  big  nail 
uome. 

All  this  is  the  criticism  of  a  matter-of-fact  man, 
who  perhaps  has  no  right  of  utterance  —  as  if  one 
without  knowledge  of  music  should  criticise  its 
cumulated  triumphs.  Many  a  man  can  enjoy  a 
burst  of  balladry  —  of  little  vagrant  songs  —  who 
is  crushed  and  bored  by  the  pretty  tangles  and 
symphonies  of  an  opera.  Spenser  was  poets'  poet 
—  not  people's  poet ;  hardly  can  be  till  people  are 
steeped  in  that  refinement,  that  poetic  sensibility, 
which  only  poets  are  supposed  to  possess.  And 
I  am  rather  unpleasantly  conscious  that  I  may 
offend  intense  lovers  of  this  great  singer  by  such 
mention  of  him :  painfully  conscious,  too,  that  it 
may  have  its  source  (as  Saintsbury  assures  us  must 
be  the  case)  in  a  poetic  inaptitude  to  give  largest 
and  adequate  relish  to  the  tender  harmonies  and 
the  mythical  reaches  of  his  sweetly  burdened  song. 
But  shall  I  not  be  honest? 

Yet  Spenser  is  never  libald,  never  vulgar,  rarely 
indelicate,  even  measured  by  modern  standards  : 
He  always  has  a  welcoming  word  for  honesty,  and 
for  bravery,   and,  I   think,  the   welcomest  word   of 


EDMUND   SPENSER.  227 

all  for  Love,   which  he  counts,  as  so  many  young 
people  do,  the  chiefest  duty  of  man. 

ODce  upon  a  time,  there  comes  to  see  Spenser  in 
his  Kilcolmau  home — that  daring  adventurer,  that 
roving  knight,  Sir-  Walter  Raleigh  —  who  is  so  well 
taught,  so  elegant,  so  brave  that  he  can  make  the 
bright  eyes  even  of  Queen  Bess  twinkle  again,  with 
the  courtliness  of  his  adulation  ;  he  comes,  I  say, 
to  see  Spenser  ;  —  for  he  too  has  a  grant  of  some 
forty  thousand  acres  carved  out  of  that  ever- 
wretched  and  misgoverned  Ireland  :  and  Spenser, 
to  entertain  his  friend,  reads  somewhat  of  the  Faery 
Queene  (not  more  than  one  canto  I  suspect),  and  Sir 
Walter  locks  arms  with  the  poet,  and  carries  him 
off  to  London,  and  presents  him  to  the  Queen ;  and 
Spenser  weaves  subtle,  honeyed  flattery  for  this 
great  Gloriana  ;  and  his  book  is  printed  ;  and  the 
Queen  smiles  on  him,  and  gives  him  her  jewelled 
hand  to  kiss,  and  a  pension  of  £50  a  year,  which  the 
stovit  old  Burleigh  thinks  too  much  ;  and  which 
Spenser,  and  poets  all,  think  too  beggarly  small. 
There  are  little  poems  that  come  after  this,  com- 
memorating this  trip  to  Court,  and  Raleigh's  hob- 
nobbing with  him  — 


228  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &-  A'LVGS. 

"Amongst  the  coolly  shade 
Of  the  green  alders,  by  the  Mulla's  shore 
[Where]  —  lie  piped  —  I  sung  — 
And  when  he  sung,  I  piped, 
By  chaunge  of  tunes,  each  making  other  merry." 

Spenser  Las  found,  too,  a  new  Rosalind  over  amid 
the  wilds  of  Ireland,  to  whom  he  addresses  a  cluster 
of  gushing  Amoretti ;  and  she  becomes  eventually 
his  bi-ide,  and  calls  out  what  seems  to  me  that 
charmingest  of  all  his  poems  —  the  Epithalamiiim. 
You  will  excuse  my  reciting  a  tender  little  lovely 
picture  from  it :  — 

"Behold,  whiles  she  before  the  Altar  stands 
Hearing  the  Holy  Priest  that  to  her  speaks, 
And  blessetli  her  with  his  two  happy  hands. 
How  the  red  roses  flush  up  in  her  cheeks, 
And  the  pure  snow,  with  goodly  vermeil  stain 
Like  crimson  dyed  in  grain : 
That  even  the  Angels,  which  continually 
About  the  sacred  altar  do  remain, 
Forget  the  service,  and  about  her  fly, 
Oft  peeping  in  her  face,  that  seems  more  fair, 
The  more  they  on  it  stare  — 
But  her  sad  eyes  still  fastened  on  the  ground, 
Are  govern-ed  with  goodly  modesty, 
That  suffers  not  one  look  to  glance  awry, 
Which  may  let  in  u  little  thought  unsound. 


EDMUND   SPENSER.  229 

Why  blush  ye,  Love,  to  give  to  me  your  hand  ? 

Tlie  pledge  of  all  our  band  ? 

Sing,  ye  Sweet  Angels,  Allelujah  sing  ! 

That  all  the  woods  may  answer,  and  your  echos  ring !  " 

To  my  mind  the  gracious  humanity  —  the  ex- 
quisite naturalness  of  this  is  -u'orth  an  ocean  of 
cloying  prettinesses  about  Gloriana  and  Britomart. 
Not  very  many  years  after  this —  just  how  many  we 
cannot  say  —  comes  the  great  tragedy  of  his  life  :  A 
new  Irish  rebellion  (that  of  Tyrone)  sends  up  its 
tide  of  fire  and  blood  around  his  home  of  Kilcol- 
man  ;  his  crojDS,  his  barns,  his  cattle,  his  poor  babe  * 
—  the  last  born  —  all  are  smothered,  and  consumed 
away  in  that  fiery  wrack  and  ruin.  He  makes  his 
way  broken-hearted  to  London  again  ;  his  old  wel- 
come as  an  adulator  of  the  Queen  is  at  an  end  ; 
Kaleigh  is  not  actively  helpful ;  Sidney  is  dead  ;  he 
has  some  cheap  lodging  almost  under  the  shadow  of 
Westminster :  He  is  sick,  maimed  in  body  and  in 
soul ;  other  accounts  —  not  yet  wholly  discredited 

*  Grosart,  in  his  Life  of  Spenser  (pp.  236-37),  gives  good 
reasons  for  doubting  this  story  which  is  based  mainly  on  the 
Jonson-Drummond  interviews.  Grosart  also  questions  —  as 
Prof.  John  Wilson  had  done  before  him  —  all  the  allegations 
of  Spenser's  extreme  indigence. 


230  LA.XDS,  LETTERS,    &-  KIXGS. 

—  rejjreseut  hiiu  as  miserably  jioor  ;  bread,  even, 
liard  to  come  by  ;  my  Lord  of  Essex  —  a  new  patron 

—  sends  him  a  few  guineas;  and  tlie  poor  i:>oet 
murmurs  —  too  late  —  too  late  !  —  and  so  he  dies 
(1599).  How  glad  we  should  have  been  to  help 
him,  had  we  been  living  in  that  time,  and  all  this 
tale  of  suffering  had  been  true  ;  —  so  we  think  :  and 
yet,  ten  to  one  Ave  should  have  said  —  "Poor  fellow, 
what  a  pity  !  " —  and  buttoned  up  our  pockets,  as 
we  do  now. 

PMUjp  Sidney. 

Meantime  what  has  become  of  that  Philip  Sidney  * 
who  flashed  upon  us  under  the  eyes  of  Elizabeth  at 
the  age  of  twenty-four  ?  You  know  him  as  the  chi- 
valric  soldier  and  the  model  gentleman.  Students 
and  young  people  all,  who  are  under  the  glamour  of 
youthful  enthusiasms,  are  apt  to  have  a  great  fond- 
ness for  Philip  Sidney  :  But  if  any  of  my  young 
readers  chance  to  be  projecting  an  essay  about  that 
courteous  gentleman  —  and  I  know  they  will,  if  they 
have  not  already  —  I  would  counsel  them  to  forego 
any  mention  of  the  story  about  the  dying  soldier 


*Philii>  Sidney,  b.  1554:   d.  158G. 


FIIILIF  SIDNEY.  231 

and  the  cup  of  water.  It  has  been  cruelly  over- 
worked already.  Indeed  it  might  have  been 
matched  in  scores  of  cases  upon  the  battle-fields  of 
our  own  war:  When  the  last  shattering  blow  comes 
to  our  poor  humanity,  the  better  nature  in  us  does 
somehow  lean  kindly  out,  in  glance  and  in  purpose. 
Yet  Philip  Sidney  was  certainly  a  man  of  great 
kindness  and  full  of  amiabilities  and  courtesies. 

"Why,  pray,  should  he  not  have  been  ?  Consider 
that  in  all  his  young  life  he  was  wrapped  in  purple. 
It  is  no  bad  thing  in  any  day  to  be  born  eldest  son 
of  an  old  and  wealthy  and  titled  family  of  England ; 
but  it  is  something  more  to  be  born  eldest  son  of 
a  Sidney  —  nephew  to  Leicester,  prime  favorite  of 
the  Queen,  cousin  to  the  Northumberlands,  the 
Sutherlands,  the  Warwicks  —  heir  to  that  old  bar- 
onial pile  of  Penshurst,  toward  which  summer 
loiterers  go  now,  every  year,  from  far-away  coun- 
tries —  to  admire  its  red  roofs  —  its  gray  walls 
curtained  with  ivy — its  tall  chimneys,  that  have 
smoked  with  the  goodly  hospitalities  of  centuries 
—  its  charming  wood-walks,  that  Ben  Jonson  and 
Spenser  and  Massinger  have  known  —  its  courts 
and  parterres  and  terraces,  where  "  Sidney's  sister, 


232  LAWS,  LETTERS,    C^   A'LYCS. 

Pembroke's  mother,"  gathered  posies  —  its  far- 
reaching  lovely  landscape,  with  Penshurst  church 
cropping  out  near  by  —  blue,  hazy  heights  off  by 
Tunbridge  —  lanes  bowered  with  hedge-rows  — 
wide-lying  wavy,  grain-fields,  and  sheep  feeding  in 
the  hollows  of  the  hills.  He  was  born  heir  to  all 
this,  I  say,  and  had  the  best  masters,  the  tender- 
est  and  the  worthiest  of  mothers  —  who  writes  to 
him  in  this  st^'le, 

"Your  noble  Father  liatli  taken  pains,  with  his  own  hand, 
to  give  you  in  this  —  His  Letter  —  so  wise  precepts  for  you  to 
follow  with  a  diligent  mind,  as  I  will  not  withdraw  your  eyes 
from  beholding,  and  reverent  honoring  the  same  —  no,  not  so 
long  a  time  as  to  read  any  letter  from  me  ;  Wheref or  —  I  only 
bless  you —  with  my  desire  to  God  to  plant  in  you  his  grace, 
and  have  always  before  your  mind  the  excellent  councils  of 
my  Lord,  your  dear  Father:  Farewell,  my  little  Philip  ;  and, 
once  again,  the  Lord  bless  you  ! 

"  Your  loving  mother, 

"Marie  Sidney." 

Ought  not  a  boy,  with  such  a  mother,  and  Pens- 
burst  in  prospect,  and  cousinly  relations  with  the 
Talbots  and  Howards  and  Stanleys  to  be  gentle- 
manly and  amiable?  Then  — his  great-uncle  — 
Leicester    (who    is   Chancellor    of   the   University) 


PHILIP  SIDNEY.  233 

writes  up  to  Oxford,  where  young  Sidney  is  read- 
ing for  his  degree— "Pray  have  my  boy,  Philip 
Sidney,  who  is  deHcate,  excused  from  fasting  during 
Lent."  And  there  is  a  plot  afoot  to  marry  this 
young  Oxford  man  to  Anne,  daughter  of  that 
Lord  Burleigh  I  told  you  of,  and  there  are  letters 
about  the  negotiation  still  extant.  "Would  you  like 
to  hear  how  Lord  Burleigh  discusses  his  daughter's 
affairs  ?         / 

"  I  have  been  pressed,"  lie  says,  "  with  kind  offers  of  my 
lord  of  Leicester,  and  have  accorded  with  him,  upon  articles 
(by  a  manner  of  A.  B.  C.)  without  naming  persons  —  that  — 
if  P.  S.  and  A.  C.  hereafter  shall  like  to  marry,  then  shall 
H.  S.  (father  of  P.  S.)  make  assurances,  etc.,  and  W.  C. 
[that's  Lord  Burleigh]  father  of  A.  C.  shall  pay,  etc. :  What 
may  follow,  I  know  not :  but  meanwhile  P.  S.  and  A.  C. 
shall  have  full  liberty." 

What  did  follow  was,  that  old  Burleigh  thought 
better  of  it,  and  married  his  daughter  to  a  bigger 
title  —  that  is  Lord  Oxford,  a  learned  and  elegant, 
but  brutal  man,  who  broke  poor  Anne  Cecil's  heart. 

Sidney,  after  his  Oxford  course,  and  another  at 
Cambridge  (as  some  authorities  say)  went  —  as  was 
the  further  mode  —  upon  his  travels  :  and  goes, 
with  the  same  golden  luck  upon  him,  to  the  great 


234  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &'  KINGS. 

house  of  Walsingham,  ambassador  of  England,  in 
Paris.  Why  not  be  gentle  ?  What  is  to  provoke  ? 
It  is  quite  a  different  thing  —  as  many  another 
Cambridge  man  knew  (Spenser  among  them),  to 
be  gentle  and  bland  and  forbearing,  when  illness 
seizes,  when  poverty  pinches,  when  friends  back- 
slide, when  Heaven's  gates  seem  shut ;  —  then, 
amiability  and  gentleness  and  forbearance  are  in- 
deed crowning  graces,  and  will  unlock,  I  think,  a 
good  many  of  the  doors  ui^on  the  courts,  Avhere  the 
weai-y  shall  be  at  rest. 

Sidney  is  at  Paris  when  that  virago  Catharine 
de'  Medici  was  lording  it  over  her  sons,  and  over 
France ;  —  there,  too,  as  it  chanced,  through  the 
slaughter  of  St.  Bai-tholomew's  day,  from  which 
bloody  holocaust  he  presently  recoils,  and  con- 
tinues his  travel  over  the  Continent,  writing  very 
charming,  practical  letters  to  his  younger  brother 
Robert : 

"You  think  my  experience,"  lie  says,  "  lias  grown  from 
the  good  things  I  have  learned:  hut  I  know  the  only  experi- 
ence which  I  have  gotten  is,  to  find  how  much  I  might  havo 
learned  and  how  much  indeed  I  have  missed  —  for  want 
of  directing  my  course  to  the  right  end  and  by  the  right 
means."     And  again  he  tells   him,   "not  to  go  travel — as 


SIDNEY'S   TRAVELS.  235 

many  people  do  —  merely  out  of  a  tickling  humor  to  do  as 
other  men  have  done,  or  to  talk  of  having  been." 

He  goes  leisurely  iuto  Italy  —  is  for  soiue  time  at 
the  famous  University  of  Padua  ;  he  is  in  Venice 
too  during  the  great  revels  which  were  had  there  in 
1574,  in  honor  of  Henry  HI.  (of  France).  The  Pi- 
azza of  San  Marco  was  for  days  and  nights  together 
a  blaze  of  light  and  of  splendor  :  what  a  city  to 
visit  for  this  young  Briton,  who  came  accredited  by 
Elizabeth  and  by  Leicester !  The  palaces  of  the 
Foscari  and  of  the  Contarini  would  be  open  to  him  ; 
the  younger  Aldus  Manutius  was  making  imprints 
of  the  classics  that  would  delight  his  eye ;  the 
temple  fi-onts  of  Palladio  were  in  their  first  fresh- 
ness :  Did  he  love  finer  forms  of  art  —  the  great 
houses  were  rich  in  its  trophies  :  the  elder  Palma 
and  Tintoretto  were  still  at  work  :  even  the  veteran 
Titian  was  carrying  his  ninety-eight  years  with  a 
stately  stride  along  the  Rivi  of  the  canal :  if  he 
loved  adventure,  the  Venetian  ladies  were  very 
beautiful,  and  the  masks  of  the  Eidotto  gave  him 
the  freedom  of  their  smiles  ;  the  escapade  of  Bi- 
anca  Capello  was  a  story  of  only  yesterday  ;  and 
for  other  romance  —  the  air  was  f  tall  of  it  ;  snatches 


236  LAXDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KINGS. 

from  Tasso's  Hinaldo  *  were  on  tlie  lips  of  the  gon- 
doliers, and  poetic  legends  lurked  in  every  ripple  of 
the  sea  that  broke  ui^on  the  palace  steps.  It  is  said 
that  Sidney  was  i:)aiuted  in  Venice  by  Paul  Vero- 
nese ;  and  if  one  is  cunning  in  those  matters  he 
may  be  able  to  trace  the  likeness  of  the  heir  of 
Penshurst  in  some  one  of  those  who  belong  to  the 
great  groups  of  noble  men  and  women  which  the 
Veronese  has  left  upon  the  walls  of  the  Ducal  Pal- 
ace. 

In  1575  he  came  home,  with  all  the  polish  that 
European  courts  and  European  culture  could  give 
him.  We  may  be  sure  that  he  paid  dainty  compli- 
ments to  the  Queen  —  then  in  the  full  bloom  of 
w^omanhood :  we  may  be  sure  that  she  devoured 
them  all  with  a  relish  that  her  queenliness  could 
not  wholly  conceal.  He  won  his  sobriquet  of  "The 
Gentleman  "  in  these  times  ;  elegantly  courteous  ; 
saying  the  right  thing  just  when  he  should  say  it : 
—  perhaps  too  elegantly  courteous — too  insistent 
that  even  a  "  Good-morning "  should  be  spoken  at 
precisely  the  right  time,  and  in  the  right  key  — 

*  The  first  edition  of  Rinaldo  was  printed  at  Venice  in 
l.")G2 :   this  great  epic  was  completed  at  Padua  in  1575. 


THE  ARCADIA.  237 

too  observant  of  the  starched  laws  of  a  deportment 
that  chills  by  its  own  consciousness  of  unvarying 
propriety,  as  if  —  well,  I  had  almost  said  —  as  if 
he  had  been  born  in  Boston.  His  favorite  sister 
meantime  has  married  one  of  the  Pembrokes,  and 
has  a  princely  place  down  at  Wilton,  near  Salisbury 
(now  another  haunt  of  pleasure-seekers).  Sidney 
was  often  there  ;  and  he  wrote  for  this  cherished 
sister  his  book,  or  poem  —  (call  it  how  we  will) 
of  Arcadia  ;  writing  it,  as  he  says,  off-hand  —  and 
without  re-reading  —  sheet  by  sheet,  for  her 
pleasure  :  I  am  sorry  he  ever  said  this  ;  it  provokes 
hot-heads  to  a  carelessness  that  never  wins  results 
worth  winning.  Indeed  I  think  Sidney  put  more 
care  to  his  Arcadia  than  he  confessed  ;  though  it  is 
true,  he  expressed  the  wish  on  his  death-bed,  that 
it  should  never  be  printed. 

Shall  I  tell  you  anything  of  it  —  that  it  is  an 
Allegory  —  shaped  in  fact  after  a  famous  Italian 
poem  of  the  same  name  —  that  few  people  now 
read  it  continuously ;  that  it  requires  great  pluck  to 
do  so  ;  and  yet  that  no  one  can  dip  into  it — high 
or  low  —  without  finding  rich  euphuisms,  poetic 
symphonies,    noble    chai'acters,    dexterous    exi^eri- 


238  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &^  AVNGS. 

mentation  in  verse  —  iambics,  sapphics,  hexameters, 
all  interlaced  with  a  sonorous  grandiloqueuce  of 
prose  —  a  curious  medley,  very  fine,  and  venj  dull  ? 
When  pubHshed  after  his  death  it  ran  through 
edition  after  edition,  and  young  wives  were  grave- 
ly cautioned  not  to  sj^end  too  much  time  over  that 
cherished  volume.  His  little  book  of  the  Defence  of 
Poesie,  which  he  also  wrote  down  at  Wilton,  appeals 
more  nearly  to  our  sympathies,  and  may  be  counted 
still  a  good  and  noble  argument  for  the  Art  of 
Poetr}'.  And  Sidney  gave  proof  of  his  skill  in  that 
art,  far  beyond  anything  in  the  Arcadia  —  in  some 
of  those  amatory  j)oems  under  title  of  Astrophel  and 
Stella,  which  were  supposed  to  have  grown  out  of 
his  fruitless  love  for  Penelope  Devereux,  to  which  I 
made  early  reference,  I  cite  a  single  sonnet  that 
you  may  see  his  manner  :  — 

'^Stella,  tliiiik  not,  that  I  by  verse  seek  fame, 
Who  seek,  who  hope,  who  love,  who  live  —  but  thee  ; 
Thine  eyes  my  pride,  thy  lips  mine  history. 
If  thou  praise  not,  all  other  praise  is  shame, 
Nor  so  ambitious  am  I  as  to  frame 
A  nest  for  my  young  praise  in  laurel  tree  ; 
In  truth  I  vow  I  wish  not  there  should  be 
Graved  in  my  epitaph,  a  Poet's  name. 


PHILIP  SIDNEY.  239 

Nor,  if  I  would,  could  I  just  title  make 

That  any  laud  thereof,  to  me  should  grow 

Without  —  my  plumes  from  other  wings  I  take  — 

For  nothing  from  my  wit  or  will  doth  flow 

Since  all  my  words  thy  beauty  doth  indite, 

And  Love  doth  hold  my  hand,  and  make  me  write." 

But  it  is,  after  all,  more  his  personality  than  his 
books  that  draws  our  attention  toward  him,  amid 
that  galaxy  of  bright  spirits  which  is  gathering 
around  the  court  of  Elizabeth.  In  all  the  revels, 
and  the  pageants  of  the  day  the  eyes  of  thousands 
fasten  upon  his  fine  figure  and  his  noble  presence. 
Though  Scott  —  singularly  enough  —  passes  him  by 
without  mention,  he  is  down  at  Kenilworth,  when 
the  ambitious  Leicester  turns  his  castle-gardens 
into  a  Paradise  to  welcome  his  sovereign.  When 
he  goes  as  ambassador  to  Rudolph  of  Germany,  he 
hangs  golden  blazonry  upon  the  walls  of  his  house  : 
Englishmen,  everywhere,  are  proud  of  this  fine 
gentleman,  Sidney,  who  can  talk  in  so  many  lan- 
guages, who  can  turn  a  sonnet  to  a  lady's  eye- 
brow, who  can  fence  with  the  best  swordsmen  of 
any  court,  who  can  play  upon  sis  instruments  of 
music,  who  can  outdance  even  his  Grace  of  Anjou. 
His  death   was  in   keeping  with   his  life:    it  hap- 


240  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &"  KINGS. 

pened  in  the  war  of  the  Low  Countries,  and  was 
due  to  a  brilliant  jiiece  of  bravado ;  he  and  his 
companions  fighting  (as  at  Balaclava  in  the  Char<^e 
of  the  Light  Brigade)  where  there  was  little  hope 
of  conquest.  All  round  them  —  iu  front  —  in  rear 
—  iu  flank  —  the  arquebuses  and  the  cannon 
twanged  and  roared.  They  beat  down  the  gun- 
ners ;  they  sabred  the  men-at-arms ;  thrice  and  four 
times  they  cut  red  ways  through  the  beleaguering 
enemy  ;  but  at  last,  a  cruel  musket-ball  came  crash- 
ing through  the  thigh  of  this  brave,  polished  gentle- 
man— Philip  Sidney  —  and  gave  him  his  death- 
wound.  Twenty-five  days  he  lingered,  saying 
brave  and  memorable  things  —  sending  courteous 
messages,  as  if  the  sheen  of  royalty  were  still 
upon  him  —  doing  tender  acts  for  those  nearest 
him,  and  dying,  with  a  great  and  a  most  worthy 
calm. 

We  may  well  believe  that  the  Queen  found  some- 
what to  wipe  from  her  cheek  when  the  tale  came  of 
the  death  of  "my  Philip,"  the  pride  of  her  court, 
Leicester,  too,  must  have  minded  it  sorely  :  and  of 
a  surety  Spenser  in  his  far  home  of  Kilcolman  ; 
writing  there,  maybe  — by  the  Mulla  shore  —  his 


PHILIP  SIDNEY.  241 

apostrophe  to  Sidney's  soul,  so  full  of  liis  sweetness 
and  of  his  wonderful  word-craft :  — 

"Ah  me,  can  so  Divine  a  thing  be  dead  ? 
Ah  no  :   it  is  not  dead,  nor  can  it  die 

But  lives  for  aye  in  Blissful  Paradise  : 
Where,  like  a  new-born  Babe,  it  soft  doth  lie 

In  bed  of  Lilies,  wrapped  in  tender  wise 

And  compassed  all  about  with  Roses  sweet 

And  dainty  violets,  from  head  to  feet. 
There  —  thousand  birds,  all  of  celestial  brood 
To  him  do  sweetly  carol,  day  and  night 

And  with  strange  notes  —  of  him  well  understood 

Lull  him  asleep  in  an-gelic  Delight 
Whilst  in  sweet  dreams,   to  him  presented  be 
Immortal  beauties,  which  no  eye  may  see." 

Two  black  palls  fling  their  shadows  on  the  court 

of  Elizabeth  in  1587  :   Sidney  died  in  October  of 

1586  ;  and  in  the  following  February  Mary  Queen 

of  Scots  was  beheaded.     The  next  year  the  Spanish 

Armada  is  swept  from  the  seas,  and  all  England  is 

given  up  to  rejoicings.     And  as  we  look  back  upon 

this  period  and  catch  its  altei'nating  light  and  shade 

on  the  pages  of  the  historians  and  in  the  lives  of 

English  poets  and  statesmen,  the  great  Queen,  in 

her  ruff  and  laces,  and  with  her  coronet  of  jewels, 

seems  somehow,  throughout  all,  the  central  figure. 
16 


242  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KLVGS. 

We  see  Kaleigh  tlie  Captain  of  her  Guard — the 
valiant  knight,  the  scholar,  the  ready  poet — but 
readiest  of  all  to  bring  his  fine  figure  and  his 
stately  gallantries  to  her  court :  We  see  Sir  Fran- 
cis Drake,  with  his  full  beard  and  bullet-head- — 
all  browned  with  his  long  voyages,  fi-om  which 
he  has  come  laden  with  ingots  of  Spanish  gold 
—  swinging  with  his  sailor-gait  into  her  august 
presence  :  We  catch  sight  of  Lord  Burleigh,  feeble 
now  with  the  weight  of  years,  leading  up  that 
young  nephew  of  his  —  Francis  Bacon,  that  he  may 
kiss  the  Queen's  hand  and  do  service  for  favors 
which  shall  make  him  in  time  Lord  Chancellor  of 
England.  Perhaps  the  rash,  headstrong  Oxford 
may  be  in  presence,  whose  poor  wife  was  once 
the  afiianced  of  Sidney :  And  the  elegant  Lord 
Buckhurst,  decorous  with  the  white  hair  of  age, 
who,  in  his  younger  days,  when  plain  Thomas 
Sackville,  had  contributed  the  best  parts  to  the 
Mirror  for  Magistrates  :  Richard  Hooker,  too,  may 
be  there  —  come  up  from  the  "  peace  and  privacy  " 
of  his  country  parsonage  —  in  his  sombre  clerical 
dress,  bent  with  study,  but  in  the  jDrime  of  his 
age  and  power,  with  the  calm  face  and  the  severe 


GREAT  ELIZABETHANS. 


243 


pliilosopliy  ■with  whicli  he  has  confronted  a  ter- 
magant of  a  wife  and  the  beginnings  of  Dissent. 
And,-  if  not  in  this  presence,  yet  somewhere  in  Lon- 
don might  have  been  found,  in  that  day,  a  3'oung 
man,  not  much  past  twenty  —  just  up  from  Strat- 
ford-upon-Avon—  to  take  his  part  in  playing  at  the 
Globe  Theatre  ;  yet  not  wholly  like  other  players. 
Even  now,  while  all  these  worthies  are  gathering 
about  the  august  Queen  in  her  brilliant  halls  at 
Greenwich  or  at  Hampton  Court,  this  young  Strat- 
fox'd  man  may  be  seated  upon  the  steps  of  Old  St. 
Paul's — with  his  chin  upon  his  hand  —  lookiug 
out  on  the  multitudinous  human  tide,  which  even 
then  swej)t  down  Ludgate  Hill,  and  meditating 
the  speeches  of  those  shadowy  courtiers  of  his  — 
only  creatures  of  his  day-dreams  ;  yet  they  are  to 
carry  his  messages  of  wisdom  into  all  lands  and 
languages. 

But  I  must  shut  the  books  where  I  see  these  fig- 
ures come  and  go. 


CHAPTER  Vn. 

AS  we  open  our  budget  to-day,  we  are  still 
under  kingship  of  the  great  Queen  Bess,  in 
whose  presence  we  saw  the  portentous  Lord  Bur- 
leigh, whose  nod  has  passed  into  history  ;  we  saw, 
too,  in  our  swift  way,  the  wise,  the  judicious,  the 
simple-minded,  the  niismarried  Richard  Hooker. 
We  called  Spenser  before  us,  and  had  a  taste  of 
those  ever-sweet  poems  of  his  —  ever  sweet,  though 
ever  so  long.  Then  his  friend  Philip  Sidney 
flashed  across  our  view,  the  over-fine  gentleman, 
yet  full  of  nobility  and  courage,  Avho  wrote  a  long 
book,  Arcadia,  so  bright  with  yellow  splendor  as  to 
tire  one  ;  and  still  so  full  of  high  thinking  as  to  war- 
rant his  fame  and  to  lend  a  halo  to  his  brave  and 
tragic  death.  You  may  remember,  too,  that  I  made 
short  mention  of  a  certain  John  Lyly,  who  was 
about  the  same  age  with  Spenser,  and    who,  with 


JOHN  LYLY.  245 

bis  pretty  eui^lmisms  came  to  cut  a  larger  figure  iu 
the  days  of  Elizabeth  than  many  stronger  men  did. 

John  Lyly. 

I  recur  to  him  now  and  tell  you  more  of  him, 
because  he  did  in  his  time  set  a  sort  of  fashion  in 
letters.  He  was  an  Oxford  man,*  born  down  in 
Kent,  and  at  twenty-five,  or  thereabout,  made  his 
fame  by  a  book,  which  grew  out  of  suggestions  (not 
only  of  name  but  largely  of  intent  and  purpose)  in 
the  Schoolmaster  of  Roger  Ascham ;  and  thus  it  hap- 
pens over  and  over  in  the  fields  of  literature,  that  a 
plodding  man  will  drop  from  his  store  a  nugget, 
over  which  some  fellow  of  lively  parts  will  stumble 
into  renown. 

The  book  I  refer  to  was  called  Eaphues,  or  the 
Anatomy  of  Wit,  which  came  into  such  extraordi- 
nary favor  that  he  wrote  shortly  after  another, 
called  Euphues  and  his  England.  And  the  fashion 
that  he  set,  was  a  fashion  of  affectations  —  of  pretti- 
nesses  of  speech  —  of  piling  words  on  words,  dain- 
tier and  daintier  —  antithesis  upon  antithesis,  with 
flavors   of  wide   reading  thrown  in,  and    spangled 

*  John  Lyly,  b.  1554  ;  d.  1606. 


246  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &-  KINGS. 

with  classic  terms  and  far-fetched  similes  —  so  that 
ladies  ambitious  of  literary  fame  larded  their  talk 
with  these  fine  euphuisms  of  Mr.  Lyly.  Some- 
thing of  a  coxcomb  I  think  we  must  reckon  him  ; 
we  might  almost  say  an  Oscar  Wilde  of  letters  — 
posing  as  finely  and  as  capable  of  drawing  female 
shoals  in  his  wake.  His  strain  for  verbal  felicities, 
always  noticeable,  comparing  with  good,  simple, 
downright  English,  as  a  dancing-master's  mincing 
step,  compares  with  the  assured,  steady  tread  of  a 
go-ahead  pedestrian,  who  thinks  nothing  of  atti- 
tudes. Scott,  you  will  remember,  sought  to  cari- 
cature the  Euphuist,  in  a  somewhat  exaggerated 
way,  in  Sir  Piercie  Shafton,  who  figures  in  his  story 
of  the  Monastery  ;  he  himself,  however,  in  the  later 
annotations  of  his  novel,  confesses  his  failure,  and 
admitted  the  justice  of  the  criticism  which  declared 
Sir  Piercie  a  bore.  Shakespeare,  also,  at  a  time  not 
far  removed  from  Lyly's  conquest,  perhaps  intended 
a  slap  at  the  euphuistic  craze,*  in  the  pedant 
Schoolmaster's  talk  of  "Love's  Labor's  Lost." 


*  The  style  of  Lyly  has  been  traced  by  Dr.  Laudmann,  an 
ingenious  German  critic,  to  the  influence  of  Don  Antonio 
de  Guevara,  a  Spanish  author,  who  wrote  El  Libro  Aureo  de 


JOHN  LYLY.  247 

Yet  there  was  a  certaiu  good  in  this  massing  of 
epithets,  and  in  this  tesselated  cumulation  of  nice 
bits  of  language,  from  which  the  more  wary  and 
skilful  of  writers  could  choose  —  as  from  a  great  vo- 
cabulary—  what  words  were  cleanest  and  clearest. 
Nor  do  I  wish  to  give  the  impression  that  there 
were  no  evidences  of  thoughtfulness  or  of  good  pur- 
pose, under  Lyly's  tintinnabulation  of  words.  Haz- 
litt  thought  excellently  well  of  him  ;  and  Charles 
Kingsley,  in  these  later  times,  has  pronounced  ex- 
travagant eulogy  of  him.  Indeed  he  had  high 
moral  likings,  though  his  inspirations  are  many  of 
them  from  Plato  or  Boethius  ;  it  is  questionable 
also  if  he  did  not  pilfer  fx'om  Plutarch  ;  certainly  he 
sugar-coats  with  his  language  a  great  many  heathen 
pills. 

In  observation  he  is  very  acute.  That  Euphues 
who  gives  name  to  his  book,  is  an  Athenian  youth 
of  rare  parts — "well-constituted  "  as  the  Greek  im- 
plies—  who  has  lived  long  in  Italy,  and  who  talks 
in  this  strain  of  the  ladies  he  saw  on  a  visit  to  Eng- 
land : — 

Marco  Aurelio,  1529.      It  was  translated   into  Englisli   bj^ 
Lord  Berners  in  1531  (published  in  1534). 


248  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KINGS. 

"  The  English  Damoiselles  have  their  bookes  tied  to  their 
girdles  —  not  featliers  —  who  are  as  cunning  in  tlie  Script- 
ures as  you  are  in  Ariosto  or  Petrark.  It  is  the  most  gorgeous 
court  [of  England]  that  ever  I  have  seene  or  heard  of  ;  but 
yet  do  they  not  use  their  apparel  so  nicely  as  you  in  Italy, 
Miio  thinke  scorne  to  kneele  at  service,  for  fear  of  wrinckles 
in  your  silk,  who  dare  not  lift  up  your  head  to  heaven,  for 
fear  of  rumpling  the  ruffs  in  your  neck  ;  yet  your  handes, 
I  confess,  are  holden  up,  rather  I  thinke,  to  show  your 
ringes,  than  to  manifest  your  righteousness." 

Elizabeth  would  have  very  probably  relished  this 
sort  of  talk,  and  have  commended  the  writer  in  j)er- 
son  ;  nor  can  there  be  any  doubt  that,  in  such  event, 
Lyly  would  have  mumbled  his  thanks  in  kissing 
the  royal  hands  :  there  are  complaining  letters  of 
his  on  the  score  of  insufficient  court  patronage, 
which  are  not  high-toned,  and  which  make  us  a  lit-  ^ 
tie  doubtful  of  a  goodly  manhood  in  him.  Cer- 
tainly his  deservings  were  great,  by  reason  of  the 
plays  which  he  wrote  for  her  Majesty's  Company  of 
Child-players,  and  which  were  acted  at  the  Chapel 
Royal  and  in  the  palaces.  In  some  of  these  there 
are  turns  of  expression  and  of  dramatic  incident 
which  Shakespeare  did  not  hesitate  to  convert  to 
his  larger  purposes  ;  indeed  there  is,  up  and  down 
in  tliem,  abundance  of  dainty  word-craft  —  of  in- 


JOHN  LYLY.  249 

genuit}'  —  of  more  than  Elizabethan  dehcacy  too, 
and  from  time  to  time,  some  sweet  little  lyrical  out- 
burst that  holds  place  still  in  the  anthologies. 

One  of  these,  with  which  I  daresay  you  may  be 
over-familiar,  is  worth  quoting  again.  It  is  called 
Apelles'  Song,  and  it  is  from  the  play  of  "  Alex- 
ander and  Campaspe  : " 

*'  Cupid  and  my  Campaspe  played 
At  cards  for  kisses —  Cupid  paid. 
He  stakes  his  quiver,  bows  and  arrows, 
His  mother  s  doves,  and  team  of  sparrows : 
Loses  them  too  :  then  down  he  throws 
The  coral  of  his  lip  —  the  Rose 
Growing  on's  cheek  (but  none  knows  how)  ; 
"With  these  the  crystal  of  his  brow, 
And  then  the  dimple  of  his  chin  — 
All  these  did  my  Campaspe  win. 
At  last,  he  set  her  both  his  eyes  — 
She  won  ;  and  Cupid  blind  did  rise. 
O  Love,  has  she  done  this  to  thee  ? 
What  shall,  alas  !  become  of  me  ?  " 

He  puts,  too,  into  imitative  jingle  of  words  the 
song  of  the  Nightingale  —  (as  Bryant  has  done  for 
the  Bobolink) ;  and  of  the  strain  of  the  skylark 
nothing  prettier  was  ever  said  than  ]\Ir.  Lyly  says : 

"  How,  at  Heaven's  gate  she  claps  her  wings, 
The  morn  not  waking  — till  she  sings." 


2SO  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KINGS, 

Francis  Bacon. 

We  go  away  from  singing  skylarks  to  j&nd  the 
next  cliaracter  that  I  shall  call  out  from  these  Eliza- 
bethan times  to  set  before  you:  this  is  Lord  Ba- 
con —  or,  to  give  him  his  true  title,  Lord  Veru- 
1am — there  being,  in  fact,  the  same  impropriety  in 
saying  Lord  Bacon  (if  custom  had  not  "brazed  it 
so  ")  that  there  would  be  in  saying  Lord  D'Israeli 
for  Lord  Beaconsfield. 

Here  was  a  great  mind  —  a  wonderful  intellect 
which  everyone  admired,  and  in  which  everyone  of 
English  birth,  from  Eoyalty  down,  took  —  and  ever 
will  take  —  a  national  pride  ;  but,  withal,  few  of 
those  amiabilities  ever  crop  out  in  this  great  char- 
acter which  make  men  loved.  He  can  see  a  poor 
priest  culprit  come  to  the  rack  without  qualms; 
and  could  look  stolidly  on,  as  Essex,  his  special 
benefactor  in  his  youth,  walked  to  the  scaffold  ;  yet 
the  misstatement  of  a  truth,  with  respect  to  physics, 
or  any  matter  about  which  truth  or  untruth  was 
clearly  demonstrable,  affected  him  like  a  galvanic 
shock.  His  biographers,  Montagu  and  Spedding, 
have  padded  his  angularities  into  roundness  ;  while 


FRANCIS  BACON.  251 

Pope  and  Macaulay  have  laslaed  him  in  the  grave- 
I  think  we  must  find  the  real  man  somewhere  be- 
tween them  ;  if  we  credit  him  with  a  great  straight- 
thinking,  truth-seeking  brain,  and  Httle  or  no  capac- 
ity for  affection,  the  riddle  of  his  strange  life  will 
be  more  easily  solved.  Spedding,*  who  wrote  a  vo- 
luminous life  of  Bacon  —  having  devoted  a  quai'ter 
of  a  century  to  necessary  studies  —  does  certainly 
make  disastrous  ripping-up  of  the  seams  in  Macau- 
lay's  rhetoric  ;  but  there  remain  certain  ugly  facts 
relating  to  the  trial  of  Essex,  and  the  bribe-takings, 
which  will  probably  always  keep  alive  in  the  popu- 
lar mind  an  under-current  of  distrust  in  respect  to 
the  great  Chancellor. 

He  was  born  in  London,  in  1561,  three  years  be- 
fore Shakespeare,  and  at  a  time  when,  from  his  fath- 

*  James  Spedding,  b.  1803  ;  d.  1881.  His  cliief  work  was 
tlie  Bacon  life  ;  and  there  is  something  pathetic  in  the 
thought  of  a  man  of  Speddiiig's  attainments,  honesty  of  pur- 
pose, and  unflagging  industry,  devoting  thirty  of  the  best 
years  of  his  life  to  a  vindication  of  Bacon's  character.  His 
aggressive  attitude  in  respect  to  Macaulay  is  particularly 
shown  in  his  Evenings  with  a  Reviewer  (2  vols.,  8vo),  in 
which  he  certainly  makes  chaff  of  a  good  deal  of  Macaulay's 
arraignment. 


252  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &-  KINGS. 

er's  house  in  the  Strand  he  could  look  sheer  across 
the  Thames  to  Southwark,  where,  before  he  was 
thirty,  the  Globe  Theatre  was  built,  in  which  Shake- 
speare acted.  He  was  in  Paris  when  his  father  died  ; 
there  is  no  grief-stricken  letter  upon  the  event,  but 
a  curious  mention  that  he  had  dreamed  two  nights 
before  how  his  father's  house  was  covered  with  black 
mortar  —  so  intent  is  he  on  mental  processes. 

He  had  a  mother  who  was  pious,  swift-thoughted, 
jealous,  imperious,  unreasonable,  with  streaks  of 
tenderness. 

"  Be  not  speedy  of  speech,"  she  says  in  one  of  her  letters 
— "  nor  talk  suddenly,  but  when  discretion  requireth,  and 
that  soberly  then.  Remember  you  have  no  father  ;  and  you 
have  little  enough  —  if  not  too  little,  regarded  your  kind, 
no-simple  mother's  wholesome  advice." 

And  again  :  "  Look  well  to  your  health  ;  sup  not,  nor  sit 
not  up  late  ;  surely  I  think  your  drinking  near  to  bedtime 
hindereth  your  and  j'our  brother's  digestion  very  much :  I 
never  knew  any  but  sickly  that  used  it  ;  besides  ill  for  head 
and  eyes."  And  again,  in  postscript:  "I  trust  you,  with  yr 
servants,  use  prayers  twice  in  a  day,  having  been  where  ref- 
ormation is.     Omit  it  not  for  any." 

And  he  responds  with  ceremony,  waiving  much 
of  her  excellent  advice,  and  sometimes  suggesting 
some  favor  she  can  do  him,  — 


FRANCIS  BACON. 


253 


"It  may  be  I  shall  have  occasion  to  visit  the  Court  this 
Vacation  [he  being  then  at  Gray's  Inn],  which  I  have  not 
done  this  months  space.  In  which  respect,  because  car- 
riage of  stuff  to  and  fro  spoileth  it,  I  would  be  glad  of  that 
light  bed  of  striped  stuff  which  your  Ladyship  hath,  if  you 
have  not  otherwise  disposed  it." 

Sharpish  words,  too,  sometimes  pass  between 
them  ;  but  he  is  always  decorously  and  untouch- 
ingly  polite. 

Indeed  his  protestations  of  undying  friendship  to 
all  of  high  station,  whom  he  addresses  unctuously, 
are  French  in  their  amplitude,  and  French,  too,  in 
their  vanities.  He  presses  sharply  always  toward 
the  great  end  of  self-advancement  —  whether  by 
flatteries,  or  cajolement,  or  direct  entreaty.  He 
believed  in  the  survival  of  the  fittest ;  and  that  the 
fittest  should  struggle  to  make  the  survival  good  — 
no  matter  what  weak  ones,  or  timid  ones,  or  confid- 
ing ones,  or  emotional  ones  should  go  to  the  wall, 
or  the  bottom,  in  the  struggle.  His  flatteries,  I 
think,  never  touched  the  Queen,  though  he  tried 
them  often  and  gave  a  lurid  color  to  his  flatteries. 
She  admired  his  parts  as  a  young  man  ;  she  had 
honored  his  father ;  she  accepted  his  services  with 
thanks  —  even     the    dreadful     services    which    he 


254  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &^  A'LVCS. 

rendered  in  demonstrating  the  treason  of  the  gal- 
lant and  generous,  but  headstrong  Earl  of  Essex. 
He  never  came  into  full  possession  of  royal  confi- 
dences, however,  until  James  I.  came  to  the  thi'one  : 
by  him  he  was  knighted,  by  him  made  Lord  Chan- 
cellor, by  him  elevated  to  the  peerage  ;  and  it  was 
under  hira  that  he  was  brought  to  trial  for  receiving 
bribes  —  was  convicted,  despoiled  of  his  judicial 
robes,  went  to  prison  —  though  it  might  be  only  for 
a  day  —  and  thereafter  into  that  retirement,  at  once 
shameful  and  honorable,  where  he  put  the  last 
touches  to  those  broad  teachings  of  "Philosophy," 
which  the  world  will  always  cherish  and  revere  : 
not  the  first  nor  the  last  instance  in  which  great 
and  fatal  weaknesses  have  been  united  to  great 
power  and  great  accomplishment. 

But  lest  you  may  think  too  hardly  of  this  emi- 
nent man,  a  qualifying  word  must  be  said  of  that 
stain  upon  him — of  receiving  bribes:  it  was  no 
uncommon  thing  for  high  judicial  personages  to 
take  gifts ;  no  uncommon  thing  for  all  high  of- 
ficers of  tlie  Government  —  nay,  for  the  Govern- 
ment itself,  as  typified  in  its  supreme  head.  And, 
Btrange  as  it   may  seem,  Bacon's,  sense   of  justice 


FRANCIS  BACON.  255 

does  not  appear  to  have  been  swayed  by  the  gifts 
he  took.  Sped  ding  has  demonstrated,  I  think, 
that  no  judgment  he  rendered  was  ever  reversed  by 
subsequent  and  farther  hearing.*  He  was  not  in 
the  ordinary  sense  a  money-lover  ;  but  he  did  love 
the  importance  and  consideration  which  mone}' 
gave,  yet  was  always  in  straits ;  and  those  un- 
wise receivings  of  his  went  to  supply  the  short- 
comings in  a  very  extravagant  and  disorderly 
home-life.  His  servants  plundered  him  ;  his 
tradespeople  fleeced  him;  nor  do  I  think  that  the 
mistress  of  the  Chancellor's  household  was  either 
very  wary  or  very  winning.  Almost  the  only 
time  there  is  mention  of  her  in  his  letters  oc- 
curs previous  to  his  marriage  (which  did  not  take 
place  till  he  was  well  in  middle  age),  and  then 
only  as  "  the  daughter  of  an  alderman  who  will 
bring  a  good  dot "  with  her.  His  mothei*-in-law, 
too,   appears   to   have    been   of   the    stage    sort   of 


*  We  are  disinclined,  liowever,  to  accept  the  same  biogra- 
pher's over-mild  treatment  of  the  bribe-taking,  as  a  "  moral 
negligence"  —  coupling  it  with  Dr.  Johnson's  moral  delin- 
quency of  lying  a-bed  in  the  morning  !  See  closing  pages  of 
Eceniags  with  a  Bcmewer. 


256  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &^  A'LVGS. 

mother-in-law,   whom   he    addresses    (by  letter)  in 
this  fashion  : — 

"Madam,"  he  says,  "  yoii  sliall  with  right  good-will  be 
made  acquainted  with  anything  that  concerneth  your  daugh- 
ters, if  you  bear  a  mind  of  love  and  concord  :  Otherwise 
you  must  be  content  to  be  a  stranger  to  us.  For  I  may  not 
be  so  unwise  as  to  suffer  you  to  be  an  author  or  occasion  of 
dissension  between  your  daughters  and  their  husbands; 
having  seen  so  much  misery  of  that  kind  in  yourself." 

This  looks  a  little  as  if  the  mother-in-law  found 
the  "  grapes  sour  "  in  the  Bacon  gardens.  I  do  not 
think  there  was  much  domesticity  about  him,  even 
if  home  influences  had  encouraged  it :  he  was  with- 
out children,  and  not  one  to  read  poetry  to  his  wife 
iu  a  boudoir  ;  yet  his  essays  concerning  marriage 
and  concerning  children  and  concerning  friend- 
ship and  concerning  extravagance,  are  full  of  j^i- 
quant  truths. 

Indeed  two  distinct  lines  of  life  ran  through  the 
career  of  this  extraordinary  man.  In  one  he  loved 
parade,  ceremony,  glitter ;  he  stooped  ungra- 
ciously to  those  Avho  ranked  him  in  factitious  dis- 
tinctions ;  was  profuse  and  heartless  in  his  adula- 
tion ;  taking  great  gifts  with  servile  acknowledg- 
ment ;  shunning  friends   who  were  falling  ;  court- 


FRANCIS  BACON.  257 

ing  enemies  who  were  rising  :  and  yet  through  all 
this,  and  looking  out  from  the  same  keen  inscru- 
table eyes  was  the  soul  of  a  philosopher  cognizant 
of  all  humanities,  searching  sharply  after  the  largest 
and  broadest  truths  ;  too  indifferent  to  small  ones  ; 
weighing  his  own  shortcomings  with  bitter  re- 
morse ;  alive  to  everything  in  science  that  should 
help  the  advancement  of  the  world,  and  absorbed  in 
high  ranges  of  thinking  which  the  animosities  and 
cares  and  criminalities  and  accidents  of  every-day 
life  did  not  seem  to  reach  or  to  disturb. 

In  such  mood  he  wrote  those  essays,  of  some 
of  which  I  have  spoken  —  wonderfully  compact  of 
thought,  and  as  wonderfully  compact  of  language  — 
which  one  should  read  and  read  again.  No  private 
library  of  a  hundred  English  books  is  complete 
without  a  copy  of  Bacon's  Essays.  The  keen  sagac- 
ity and  perdurable  sense  of  his  observations  always 
engage  one.     Thus  of  Travel,  he  says,  — 

"Let  him  [the  Traveller]  sequester  himself  from  the 
company  of  his  countrymen,  and  diet  in  such  places  where 
there  is  good  company  of  the  nation  where  be  travelleth. 
He  that  travelleth  into  a  country  before  he  hatli  some  en- 
trance into  the  language,  goeth  to  school  and  not  to  travel." 


2S8  LANDS,   LETTERS,    £-  KLYGS. 

Of  Friendship  :  —  "  This  communicating  of  a  man's  self  to 
liis  friend,  works  two  contrary  efforts;  "for  it  redoubleth 
joys  and  cutteth  griefs  in  halves."  Again,  of  the  advantages 
of  talk  with  a  friend:  — "Certain  it  is,  that  whosoever  hath 
his  mind  fraught  with  many  thoughts,  his  wits  and  under- 
standing do  clarify  and  break  up,  in  the  communicating 
and  discoursing  with  another;  he  tosseth  his  thoughts  more 
easily ;  he  marshalleth  them  more  orderly  ;  he  seeth  how 
they  look  when  they  are  turned  into  words  ;  finally,  he 
waxeth  wiser  than  himself :  and  that  more  by  an  hours  dis- 
course than  by  a  days  meditation." 

Thus  I  could  go  on  for  page  after  page  of  ci- 
tations wliicli  3'ou  would  approve,  and  which  are 
so  put  in  words  that  no  mending  or  shortening  or 
deepening  of  their  force  seems  anyway  possible. 
And  yet  this  book  of  Essays  —  with  all  its  sagacities, 
its  ringing  terseness,  its  stanch  worldly  wisdom — ■ 
is  one  we  do  not  warm  toward.  Even  when  he 
talks  of  friendship  or  marriage,  death  or  love,  a 
cold  line  of  self-seeking  pervades  it.  Of  sacrifice 
for  love's  sake,  for  friendship's  sake,  or  for  chari- 
ty's sake,  there  is  nothing  ;  and  in  that  Essay  on 
"  Parents  and  Children  "  —  what  iciness  of  reflection 
—  of  suggestion !  A  man  might  talk  as  Bacon  talks 
there,  of  the  enti-ies  in  a  "  Herd-book." 

As  for  the  Novum  Organum  and  the  Augmentis 


FRANCIS  BACON.  259 

Scientiarum  —  you  would  not  read  them  if  I  were 
4o  suggest  it :  indeed,  there  is  no  need  for  reading 
them,  except  as  a  Hterary  exciu^sus,  seeing  that 
they  have  Avrought  their  work  in  breaking  up  old, 
slow  modes  of  massing  knowledge,  and  in  pouring 
light  upon  new  ways  ;  —  in  serving,  indeed,  so  far 
as  their  reach  went,  as  a  great  logical  lever,  by 
which  subsequent  inquii'ers  have  prised  up  a  thou- 
sand hidden  knowledges  and  ways  of  knowledge  to 
the  comprehension  and  cognizance  of  the  world. 

And  the  two  lines  of  life  in  Francis  Bacon  were 
joined  by  a  strange  hyphen  at  last  :  He  got  out  of 
his  coach  (which  was  not  paid  for),  and  in  his  silk 
stockings  walked  through  the  snow,  to  prosecute 
some  scientific  post-mortem  experiment  upon  the 
body  of  a  chicken  he  had  secured  by  the  roadside, 
near  to  London.  He  caught  cold  —  as  lesser  men 
would  have  done  ;  and  he  died  of  it.  This  date  of 
his  death  (1626)  brings  us  beyond  Elizabeth's  time 
—  beyond  James'  time,  too,  and  far  down  to  the 
early  years  of  Charles  I.  He  was  born,  as  I  said, 
three  years  before  Shakespeare,  three  years  after 
Elizabeth  came  to  the  throne ;  and  the  Novum 
Organum  was  published  in  the  same  year  in  which 


26o  LANDS,   LETTERS,    £-  KIXGS. 

the  Pilgrims  lau Jed  at  Plymouth  Rock  —  a  conveu- 
ieut  peg  on  which  to  hang  the  date  of  two  great 
events. 

He  wag  buried  in  the  old  town  of  St.  Alhan's,  of 
whose  antiquities  I  have  already  spoken,  and  near 
to  which  Gorhambury,  the  country  home  of  Bacon, 
was  situated.  The  town  and  region  are  well  worth 
a  visit :  and  it  is  one  of  the  few  spots  whither  one 
can  still  go  by  a  well-appointed  Englisli  stage-coach 
with  sleek  horses  —  four-in-hand,  which  starts  every 
morning  in  summer  from  the  "White  Horse  Cellar, 
in  Piccadilly,  and  spins  over  the  twenty  miles  of  in- 
tervening beautiful  road  (much  of  it  identical  with 
the  old  Roman  Watling  Street)  in  less  than  two 
hours  and  a  half.  The  drive  is  through  Middlesex, 
and  into  "pleasant  Hertfordshire,"  where  the  huge 
Norman  tower  of  the  old  abbey  buildings,  rising 
from  the  left  bank  of  the  Ver,  marks  the  town  of  St. 
Alban's.  The  tomb  and  monument  of  Bacon  are  in 
the  Church  of  St.  IVIichael's :  there  is  still  an  Earl  of 
Verulam  presiding  over  a  new  Gorhambury  House  ; 
and  thereabout,  one  may  find  remnants  of  the  old 
home  of  the  great  Chancellor  and  some  portion  of 
the  noble  gardens  in  which  he  tool;  so  much  de- 


THOMAS  HOBBES.  261 

liglit,  and  in  which  he  wandered  up  and  down,  in 
peaked  hat  and  in  ruff,  and  with  staff — pondering 
affiurs  of  State  —  possibly  meditating  the  while 
upon  that  most  curious  and  stately  Essay  of  his 
upon  "  Gardens,"  which  opens  thus  :  — 

"  God  Almighty  first  planted  a  garden.  And,  indeed,  it  is 
the  purest  of  human  pleasures.  It  is  the  greatest  refresh- 
ment to  the  spirits  of  man,  without  which  building  and 
palaces  are  but  gross  handyworks :  and  a  man  shall  ever 
see,  that  when  ages  grow  to  civility  and  elegancy,  men  come 
to  build  stately,  sooner  than  to  garden  finely  ;  as  if  garden- 
ing were  the  greater  perfection." 

Surely,  we  who  grow  our  own  salads  and  "graff" 
our  own  pear-trees  may  take  exaltation  from  this  : 
and  yet  I  do  not  believe  that  the  great  Chancellor 
ever  put  his  hand,  laboringly,  to  a  rake-stave  :  but 
none  the  less,  he  snuffed  complacently  the  odor  of 
his  musk-roses  and  his  eglantine,  and  looked  ad- 
miringly at  his  clipped  walls  of  hedges. 

TJiomas   Ilohbes. 

There  used  to  come  sometimes  to  these  gardens 
of  Gorhambur}',  in  Bacon's  day,  a  young  man  — 
twenty   years    his   junior  —  of   a   strangely   subtle 


262  LANDS,  LETTERS,    ^^  KINGS. 

mind,  who  caught  so  readily  at  the  great  Chancel- 
lor's meaning,  and  was  otherwise  so  well  instructed 
that  he  was  employed  by  him  in  some  clerical  duties. 
His  name  was  Thomas  Hobbes  ;  and  it  is  a  name 
that  should  be  known  and  remembered,  because  it 
is  identified  with  writings  which  had  as  much  influ- 
ence upon  the  current  of  thought  in  the  middle  of 
the  next  century  (the  seventeenth)  as  those  of  Her- 
bert Spencer  have  now,  and  for  somewhat  similar 
reasons.  He  was  a  very  free  thinker,  as  well  as  a 
deep  one ;  keeping,  from  motives  of  policy,  nomin- 
ally within  Church  lines,  yet  abhorred  and  disavowed 
by  Church-teachers  ;  believing  in  the  absolute  right 
of  kings,  and  in  self-interest  as  the  nucleus  of  all 
good  and  successful  schemes  for  the  conduct  of  life  ; 
weighing  relations  to  the  future  and  a  Supreme 
Good  (if  existing)  with  a  trader's  prudence,  and 
counting  Friendship  "a  sense  of  social  utility." 
His  theory  of  government  was — a  crystallization  of 
forces,  coming  about  regularly  by  the  prudent  self- 
seeking  of  individuals.  Of  divine  or  sj^iritual  influ- 
ences he  does  not  take  any  sympathetic  cognizance  ; 
hard,  cold,  calculating ;  not  inspiring,  not  hopeful ; 
feeding  higher  appetites  on  metaphysic  husks. 


THOMAS  HOBBES.  263 

Of  his  Deism  I  give  this  exhibit :  — 

"Forasmuch  as  God  Almighty  is  incomprehensible,  it  f ol- 
loweth  that  we  can  have  no  conception  or  image  of  the 
Deity  ;  and  consequently,  all  his  attributes  signify  our  inabil- 
ity and  defect  of  power  to  conceive  anything  concerning  his 
nature,  and  not  any  conception  of  the  same,  except  only  this 
—  that  there  is  a  God.  For  the  effects,  we  acknowledge 
natnrally,  do  include  a  power  of  their  producing,  before 
they  were  produced  ;  and  that  power  presupposeth  some- 
thing existent  that  hath  such  power  :  and  the  thing  so  exist- 
ing with  power  to  produce,  if  it  were  not  eternal,  must 
needs  have  been  produced  by  somewhat  before  it ;  and  that, 
again,  by  something  else  before  that,  till  we  come  to  an 
eternal  (that  is  to  say,  the  first)  Power  of  all  Powers,  and 
first  Cause  of  all  Causes  ;  and  this  is  it  which  all  men  con- 
ceive by  the  name  God,  implying  eternity,  incomprehensibil- 
ity, and  omnipotency.  And  thus  all  that  will  consider  may 
know  that  God  is,  though  not  what  he  is. " 

Cribbing  his  emotional  nature  (if  he  ever  had 
any),  he  yet  writes  with  wonderful  directness,  per- 
spicacity, and  uerue  —  making  "  Plobbism  "  talked 
of,  as  Spencerism  is  talked  of.  Indeed,  one  does 
not  see  clearly  how  any  man,  flinging  only  his  bare 
hook  of  logic  and  his  sinker  of  reason  into  the  in- 
finite depths  around  us,  can  fish  up  anything  of  a 
helpfully  spiritual  sort  much  better  than  Hobbism 
now. 


264  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KINGS. 

He  was  specially  befriended  by  the  Caven- 
dishes, having  once  been  tutor  to  a  younger  scion 
of  that  distinguished  family  ;  and  so  he  came  to 
pass  his  latest  years  in  their  princely  home  of 
Chatsworth,  humored  by  the  Duke,  and  treated  by 
the  Duchess  as  a  pet  bear  —  to  be  regularly  fed 
and  not  provoked  ;  climbing  the  Derbyshire  hills  of 
a  morning,  dining  at  mid-day,  and  at  candle-light- 
ing retiring  to  his  private  room  to  smoke  his  twelve 
pipes  of  tobacco  (his  usual  allowance)  and  to  follow 
through  the  smoke  his  winding  trails  of  thought.* 

He  lived  to  the  extreme  age  of  ninety-two,  thus 
coming  well  down  into  the  times  of  Charles  H., 
who  used  to  say  of  him  that  "  he  was  a  bear  against 
whom  the  Church  played  her  young  dogs  to  exer- 
cise them."  He  lived  and  died  a  bachelor,  not  rel- 
ishing society  in  general,  and  liking  only  such 
shrewd  acute  friends  as  could  track  him  in  his 
subtleties,  who  had  the  grace  to  applaud  him,  and 
the  wise  policy  of  conceahng  their  antagonisms. 

He  is  not  much  cited  now  in  books,  nor  has  his 


*  The  extraordinary  habits  of  Hobbes  are  made  subject  of 
pleasant  ilhistrative  comment  in  Sydney  Smith's  (so  called) 
Sketches  of  Moral  Philosophy,  Lecture  XXVI. 


THOMAS  HOBBES.  265 

name  association  with  any  of  those  felicities  of  hter- 
ature  which  exude  perennial  perfumes.  He  was 
careless  of  graces  ;  he  stirred  multitudes  into  new 
trains  of  thought ;  he  fed  none  of  them  with  any  of 
the  minor  and  gracious  delights  of  learning.  Per- 
haps he  is  best  known  in  literary  ways  proper  by  a 
close  and  lucid  translation  of  the  History  of  Thucy- 
dides,  which  I  believe  is  still  reckoned  by  scholars 
a  good  rendering  of  the  Greek.* 

He  ventured,  too,  upon  verse  in  praise  of  Derby- 
shire and  of  the  valley  of  the  Derwent,  but  it  is 
not  rich  or  beautiful.  A  man  who  keeps  his  emo- 
tional nature  in  a  strait-jacket — for  security  or  for 
other  purpose  —  may  make  catalogues  of  trees,  or 
of  summer  days  ;  but  he  cannot  paint  the  lilies  or 
a  sunrise.  A  translation  of  Homer  which  he  under- 
took and  accomplished,  when  over  eighty,  was  just 
as  far  from  a  success,  and  for  kindred  reasons. 


*  Hobbes'  Thucydides  was  first  published  in  the  year  1628. 
An  earlier  English  version  (1550)  was,  in  effect,  only  a  trans- 
lation of  a  translation,  being  based  upon  the  French  of 
Claude  de  Seyssel,  Bishop  of  Marseilles.  Hobbes  sneers  at 
this,  and  certainly  made  a  better  one — very  litei'al,  some- 
times tame  —  sometimes  vulgar,  but  remaining  the  best  until 
the  issue  of  Dean  Smith's  (1753). 


266  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KLYGS. 

Geor(je  Chajpman. 

There  was,  however,  another  translation  of  Homer 
about  those  times,  or  a  little  earlier,  which  was  of 
much  rarer  quality,  and  which  has  not  lost  its  rare 
flavors  even  now.  I  speak  of  George  Chapman's. 
It  is  not  so  true  to  the  Greek  as  Hobbes'  Thucycl- 
ides  ;  indeed  not  true  at  all  to  the  words,  but  true 
to  the  spirit ;  and  in  passages  where  the  translator's 
zeal  was  aflame  catching  more  of  the  dash,  and 
abounding  flow,  and  brazen  resonance  of  the  old 
Greek  poet  than  Pope,  or  Cowper,  Derby,  or  Bryant. 

The  literalists  will  never  like  him,  of  course  ;  he 
drops  words  that  worry  him  —  whole  lines  indeed 
with  which  he  does  not  choose  to  grapple  ;  he  adds 
words,  too  —  whole  lines,  scenes  almost ;  there  is 
vulgarity  sometimes,  and  coarseness ;  he  calls  things 
by  their  old  homely  names ;  there  is  no  fine  talk 
about  the  chest  or  the  abdomen,  but  the  Greek 
lances  drive  straight  through  the  ribs  or  to  the 
navel,  and  if  a  cut  be  clean  and  large  —  we  are  not 
told  of  crimson  tides  —  but  the  blood  gurgles  out 
in  great  gouts  as  in  a  slaughter-house  ;  there  may 
be  over-plainness,  and   over-heat,  and   over-stress ; 


CHAPMAN'S  HOMER.  267 

but  nowhere  weakness ;  and  his  unwieldlyj  stag- 
gering lines  —  fourteen  syllables  long  —  forge  on 
through  the  ruts  Vi^hich  the  Homeric  chariots  have 
worn,  bouncing  and  heaving  and  plunging  and  jolt- 
ing, but  always  lunging  forward  with  their  great 
burden  of  battle,  of  brazen  shields,  and  ponderous 
war-gods.  I  hardly  know  where  to  cut  into  the 
Avelter  of  his  long  lines  for  sample,  but  in  all  parts 
his  brawny  pen  declares  itself.  Take  a  bit  from 
that  skrimmage  of  the  Sixteenth  Book  where — 

"The  swift  Meriones 
Pursuing  flying  Acamas,  just  as  he  got  access 
To  horse  and  chariot  —  overtook,  and  dealt  liim  such  a  blow 
On  his  right  shoulder  that  he  left  his  chariot,  and  did  strow 
The  dusty  earth  :  life  left  limbs,  and  night  his  eyes  possessed. 
Idomeneus  his  stern  dart  at  Erymas  addressed, 
As  —  like  to  Acamas  —  he  fled  ;  it  cut  the  sundry  bones 
Beneath  his  brain,  betwixt  his  neck  and  foreparts,  and  so 

runs, 
Sliaking   his   teeth   out,    through   his   mouth,   his   eyes   all 

drowned  in  blood ; 
So  through  his  nostrils  and  his  mouth,  that  now  dart-opeu 

stood. 
He  breathed  his  spirit." 

And  again  that  wonderful  duel  between  Patroclus 
and  the  divine  Sarpedon  : 


268  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  KLNCS. 

"Down  jumped  he  from  his  chariot,  down  leaped  his  foe  as 

light, 
And  as,  on  some  far-looking  rock,  a  cast  of  vultures  fight, 
—  Fly  on  each  other,  strike  and  truss  —  part,  meet,  and  then 

stick  hy, 
Tug,  both  with  crooked  beaks  and  seres,  cry,  fight,  and  fight 

and  cry  ; 
So  fiercely  fought  these  angry  kings,  and  showed  as  hitter 

galls." 

What  a,  descrijDtion  this  old  Chapman  would  have 
made  of  a  tug  at  foot-ball ! 

Another  fragment  I  take  from  the  Twenty-first 
Book,  where  the  Eiver  God  roars  and  rages  in  the 
waters  of  Scamander  against  Achilles : 

"Then  swell'd  his  waves,  then  rag'd,  then  boil'd  again 

Against  Achilles,  up  flew  all,  and  all  the  bodies  slain 

In  all  his  deeps,  of  which  the  heaps  made  bridges   to  his 

waves 
He   belch'd    out,  roaring  like  a  bull.     The  unslain  yet  he 

saves 
In  his   black  whirl -pits,  vast  and  deep.      A   horrid  billow 

stood 
About  Achilles.     On  his  shield  the  violence  of  the  Flood 
Beat  so,  it  drove  him  back,  and  took  his  feet  up,  his  fair 

palm 
Enforc'd  to  catch  into  his  stay  a  broad  and  lofty  elm, 
Whose  roots  he  tossed  up  with  his  hold,  and  tore  up  all  the 

shore." 


MARLOWE.  269 

When  any  of  us  can  make  as  spirited  a  transla- 
tion as  that,  I  think  we  can  stand  a  scolding  from 
the  teachers  for  not  being  literal.  George  Chap- 
man lived  a  very  long  life,  and  did  other  things 
worthily ;  wrote  a  mass  of  dramas  *  —  but  not  of 
the  very  best ;  they  belong  to  the  class  of  plays 
those  people  talk  of  who  want  to  talk  of  things 
nobody  has  read.  I  think  better  and  richer  things 
are  before  us. 

Marlowe. 

Did  it  ever  happen  to  you  to  read  upon  a  sum- 
mer's day  that  delightful  old  book  —  of  a  half  cen- 
tury later  — called  The  Complete  Angler;  and  do 
you  remember  how,  on  a  certain  evening  when 
the  quiet  Angler  had  beguiled  himself  with  loiter- 
ing under  beech-trees  and  watching  the  lambs  and 
listening  to  the  birds,  he  did  encounter,  in  an  ad- 
joining field,  a  handsome  milkmaid,  who  lifted  up 

*  Among  the  best  known  with  which  Chapman's  name  is 
connected  (jointly  with  Ben  Jonson's  and  Marston's)  is 
'^  Eastica7'd  Hoe!"  containing  a  good  many  satirical  things 
upon  the  Scotch  —  which  proved  a  dangerous  game  —  under 
James  ;  and  came  near  to  putting  the  authors  in  limbo. 


270  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  AVNCS. 

her  voice  —  which  was  Hke  a  nightingale's  —  to  an 
old-fashioued  song,  beginning  ?  — 

"  Come  live  with  me  and  be  my  love, 
And  we  will  all  the  pleasures  prove 
That  valleys,  groves,  or  hills,  or  field 
Or  woods,  or  steepy  mountains  yield — 

And  I  will  make  thee  beds  of  roses 
And  then  a  thousand  fragrant  posies 
A  cap  of  flowers  and  a  kirtle 
Embroidered  all  with  leaves  of  myrtle." 

"Well,  that  song  of  the  milkmaid,  with  its  setting 
of  verdant  meads  and  silver  streams  and  honey- 
suckle hedges  keeps  singing  itself  in  a  great  many 
ears  to-day :  And  it  was  written  by  Christopher 
Marlowe,*  one  of  the  most  harum-scarum  young 
dare-devils  of  Elizabethan  times.  He  was  born  in 
the  same  year  with  Shakespeare  —  down  in  Canter- 
bury, or  near  by  (whither  we  saw  St.  Augustine 
carrying  Christian  crosses)  —  was  son  of  a  shoe- 
maker who  lived  thereabout,  yet  came  somehow  to 
be  a  Cambi'idge  man,  drifted  thereafter  to  London 
—  full  of  wit  and  words  of  wantonness  ;  develop- 
ing early ;  known  for  a  tragedy  that  caught  the  ear 

*  B.  1564  ;  d.  1593. 


MARLOWE.  271 

of  the  town  six  years  before  Shakespeare  had  pub- 
lished the  "  Venus  and  Adonis."  He  was  an  actor, 
too,  as  so  many  of  the  dramatic  wits  of  that  day 
were  —  maybe  upon  the  same  boards  where  Shake- 
speare was  then  certainly  a  mender,  if  not  a  maker 
of  parts.  Did  they  hobnob  together?  Did  they 
compare  plots  ?     If  we  only  knew  :  but  we  do  not. 

The  critics  of  the  days  closely  succeeding  said 
he  would  have  rivalled  Shakespeare  if  he  had  lived  : 
Doubtless  he  would  have  brought  more  learning 
to  the  rivaliy  ;  perhaps  an  equal  wit  —  maybe  an 
even  greater  rhythmic  faculty  and  as  dauntless 
and  daring  imaginative  power ;  but  dignity  and 
poise  of  character  were  not  in  him.  He  died  — 
stabbed  —  in  a  drunken  brawl  before  he  was  thirty.* 
In  his  tragedies  —  if  you  read  them  —  you  will  find 
the  beat  and  flow  and  rhythm  —  to  which  a  great 

*  Henceforth  one  who  would  know  of  Marlowe,  and 
read  what  he  wrote,  in  text  which  comes  nearest  the  dra- 
matist's own  (for  we  can  hardly  hope  for  absolute  certainty) 
should  consult  the  recent  scholarly  edition,  edited  by  A.  H. 
Bullen  (Nimmo,  1884),  in  three  volumes.  We  doubt,  how- 
ever, if  such  popular  re-establishment  of  the  poet's  fame 
can  be  anticipated  as  would  seem  to  be  foreshadowed  iu  the 
wishes  and  glowing  encomiums  of  his  editor. 


272  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &^  A'LVGS. 

many  of  the  best  succeeding  English  tragedies  were 
attuned.  He  scored  first  uj)on  British  theatre- 
walls,  with  fingers  made  tremulous  by  tavern  orgies, 
a  great  sampler  of  dramatic  story,  by  which  scores 
of  succeeding  play-writers  set  their  copy  ;  but  into 
these  copies  many  and  many  a  one  of  lesser  power 
put  a  grace,  a  tenderness,  and  a  dignity  which  never 
belonged  to  the  half-crazed  and  short-lived  Mar- 
lowe. You  will  remember  him  best  perhaps  as  the 
author  of  the  pleasant  little  madrigal  of  Avhich  I 
cited  a  verselet  ;  and  if  you  value  the  delicatest  of 
description,  you  will  relish  still  more  his  unfinished 
version  of  the  Greek  story  of   "Hero  and  Leander" 

—  a  pregnant  line  of  which  — 

"  who  ever  loved  that  loved  not  at  first  sight" 

—  has  the  abiding  honor  of  having  been  quoted  by 
Shakespeare  in  his  play  of  "  As  You  Like  It," 

I  leave  Marlowe  —  citing  first  a  beautiful  bit  of 
descriptive  verse  from  his  "  Hero  and  Leander  :  "— - 

"  At  Sestos  Hero  dwelt :  Hero  the  fair, 
Whom  young  Apollo  courted  for  her  hair, 
And  offered  as  a  dower  his  burning  throne, 
Where  she  should  sit  for  men  to  gaze  upon. 


MARLOWE.  273 

Tlie  outside  of  lier  garments  were  of  lawn, 

—  The  lining  purple  silk,  with  gilt  stars  drawn. 

Upon  her  head  she  wore  a  myrtle  wreath 

From. thence  her  veil  reached  to  the  ground  beneath ; 

Her  veil  was  artificial  flowers  and  leaves, 

Whose  workmanship  both  man  and  beast  deceives  ; 

Many  would  praise  the  sweet  smell,  as  she  past. 

When  'twas  the  odor  that  her  breath  forth  cast ; 

And  there/or  honey-bees  have  sought  in  vain 

And  beat  from  thence,  have  lighted  there  again. 

About  her  neck  hung  chains  of  pebble  stone, 

Which,  lighted  by  her  neck,  like  diamonds  shone. 

She  wore  no  gloves  ;  for  neither  sun  nor  wind 

Would  burn  or  parch  her  hands,  but,  to  her  mind  ; 

Or  warm,  or  cool  them ;  for  they  took  delight 

To  play  upon  those  hands,  they  were  so  white. 

Some  say,  for  her  the  fairest  Cupid  pin'd 

And,  looking  in  her  face,  was  strooken  blind. 

But  this  is  true  ;  so  like  was  one  the  other, 

As  he  imagined  Hero  was  his  mother  : 

And  often-times  into  her  bosom  flew, 

About  her  naked  neck  his  bare  arms  threw. 

And  laid  his  childish  head  upon  her  breast 

And,  with  still  panting  rock't,  there  took  his  rest." 

I  think  all  will  agree  that  this  is  very  delicately 
done. 


274  LA  ADS,  LETTERS,   ^  KL\GS. 

A  Tavern  Coterie. 

But  let  us  not  forget  where  Ave  are,  and  where  we 
are  finding  sucli  men  and  such  poems  :  we  are  in 
London  and  are  close  upon  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
centui-y  ;  there  are  no  morning  newspapers  ;  these 
came  long  afterward  ;  but  the  story  of  such  a  death 
as  that  of  Marlowe,  stabbed  in  the  eye  —  maybe 
by  his  own  dagger  —  would  spread  from  tongue  to 
tongnie  ;  (possibly  one  of  his  horrific  dramas  had 
been  played  that  very  day)  :  certainly  the  knowledge 
of  it  would  come  quick  to  all  his  boon  friends  —  ac- 
tors, writers,  wits  —  who  were  used  to  meet,  maybe 
at  the  Falcon  on  Bankside,  or  possibly  at  the  Mer-" 
maid  Tavern. 

This  Mermaid  Tavern  was  a  famous  place  in 
those  and  in  succeeding  days.  It  stood  on  Cheap- 
side  (between  Friday  and  Bread  Streets)  gorgeous 
Avith  three  ranges  of  Elizabethan  windows,  that 
gave  look-out  upon  an  array  of  goldsmiths'  shops 
which  shone  across  the  way.  It  was  almost  in  the 
shadow  of  the  Church  of  St.  Mary  le  Bow,  burned 
in  the  great  fire,  but  having  its  representative 
tower  and    spire  — a    good    work   of   Christopher 


THOMAS  LODGE.  275 

W'l-en — standing  thereabout  in  our  time,  and  still 
holding  out  its  clock  over  the  sidewalk. 

And  the  literary  friends  who  would  have  gathered 
in  such  a  place  to  talk  over  the  sad  happening  to 
Kit   Marlowe  are   those    whom    it   behoves   us   to 
know,  at  least  by  name.     There,  surely  would  be 
Thomas  Lodge,*  who  was  concerned  in  the  writing 
of  plays  ;  wrote,  too,  much  to  his  honor,  a  certain 
novel   (if   we   may  call   it   so)   entitled   Rosalynde, 
from  which  Shakespeare  took  the  hint  and  much 
of  the  pleasant  machinery  for  his  delightful  drama 
of  "As  You  Like  It."     This  Lodge  was  in  his  youth 
hail  fellow  with  actors  w^ho  gathered  at  taverns  ; 
and  —  if  not  actor  himself  —  was  certainly  a  lover 
of  their  wild  ways  and  their  f eastings.     He  admired 
Eaphues   overmuch,   was   disjposed    to  literary   af- 
fectations and  alliteration  —  writing,  amongst  other 
things,  A  Nettle  for  Nice  Noses.     He  was,  too,  a 
man   of   the   world    and    wide   traveller ;    voyaged 
with  Cavendish,  and  was  said  to  be  engaged  in  a 
British  raid  upon  the   Canaries.     In  later  years  he 
became  a   physician   of   soberly   habits   and   much 
credit,  dying  of  the  plague  in  1625. 

*  B.  about  1556 ;  d.  1625.   . 


2  76  LAA'DS,  LE  r TEA'S,   3^-  KLYGS. 

Naslie*  also  would  have  been  good  mate-fellow 
with  Marlowe ;  a  Cambridge  man  this  —  though 
possibly  "  weaned  before  his  time ;  "  certainly  most 
outspoken,  hard  to  govern,  quick-witted,  fearless, 
flinging  his  fiery  word-darts  where  he  would. 
Gabriel  Harvey,  that  priggish  patron  of  Spenser, 
to  whom  I  have  alluded,  found  this  to  his  cost. 
Indeed  this  satirist  came  to  have  the  name  of  the 
English  Aretino  —  as  sharp  as  he,  and  as  wild-liv- 
ing, and  wild-loving  as  he. 

Nashe  was  a  native  of  Lowestoft,  on  the  eastern- 
most point  of  English  shore,  in  Suffolk,  not  far 
from  those  potteries  (of  Gurton)  whose  old  quaint 
products  collectors  still  seek  for  and  value.  Dr. 
Grosart,  in  the  Huth  Library,  has  built  a  wordy 
monument  to  his  memory  ;  we  do  not  say  it  is  un- 
deserved ;  certainly  he  had  a  full  brain,  great  readi- 
ness, graphic  power,  and  deep  love  for  his  friends. 
Like  Lodge,  he  travelled  :  like  him  took  to  his 
Avits  to  pay  tavern  bills  ;  a  sharj)  fellow  every  way. 
He  lent  a  hand,  and  a  strong  one,  to  that  tedious, 
noisy,  brawling  ecclesiastic  controversy  of  his  day 
—  called  the  Mar-Prelate  one  ;  a  controversy  full  of 
*  Thomas  Xashe,  b.  about  15G4;  d.  1001. 


ROBERT  GREENE.  277 

a  great  swash  of  those  prickly,  sharp-tasted,  biting 
words  —  too  often  belonging  to  church  quarrels  — 
and  which  men  hardly  approach  for  comment,  even 
in  our  time,  without  getting  themselves  pricked  by 
contact  into  wrathful  splutter  of  ungracious  lan- 
guage. 

One  may  get  a  true  taste  (and  I  think  a  surfeit) 
of  his  exuberance  in  epithet,  and  of  his  coarse  but 
rasping  raillery  in  his  Pierce  Penilesse.  Here  is 
one  of  his  pleasant  lunges  at  some  "  Latinless " 
critic  :  — "  Let  a  scholar  write  and  he  says  —  '  Tush, 
I  like  not  these  common  fellows '  ;  let  him  Avrite 
well,  and  he  says  —  '  Tush,  it's  stolen  out  of  some 
book.'" 

Then  there  was  Eobert  Greene  *  —  a  Reverend, 
but  used  to  tavern  gatherings,  and  whose  story  is  a 
melancholy  one,  and  worth  a  little  more  than  mere 
mention.  He  was  a  man  of  excellent  family,  well 
nurtured,  as  times  went ;  native  of  the  old  city  of 
Norwich,  in  Norfolk ;  probably  something  older 
than  either  Marlowe  or  Shakespeare ;  studied  at  St. 

*  B.  1560  (?) ;  d.  1592.  See  Grosart's  edition  of  liis  writings 
(in  Huth  Library)  where  Dr.  G.  gives  the  best  color  possible 
to  his  life  and  works. 


27S  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KINGS. 

Johu's,  Cambridge  —  "amongst  wags"  —  Le  says 
in  Lis  Repentance  —  "  as  lewd  as  myself ; "  was  a 
clergyman  (after  a  sort)  ;  pretty  certainly  bad  a 
cburcb  at  one  time  ;  married  a  cbarming  wife  in 
tbe  country',  but  going  up  to  tbat  maelstrom  of 
London  fell  into  all  evil  ways :  wrote  little  poems 
a  saint  might  have  written,  and  cracked  jokes  with 
his  tongue  that  would  make  a  saint  shudder  ;  de- 
serted his  wife  and  child;  became  a  red-bearded 
bully,  raging  in  the  taverns,  with  unkempt  hair  : 
Yet  even  thus  and  there  (as  if  all  England  iu 
those  Elizabethan  times  bloomed  with  lilies  and 
lush  roses,  which  lent  their  perfume  to  all  verse 
the  vilest  might  write)  inditing  poems  having 
a  tender  pathos,  which  will  live.  Take  these 
verselets  for  instance  ;  and  as  you  read  them,  re- 
member that  he  had  deserted  his  pure,  fond,  loving 
wife  and  his  prattling  boy,  and  was  more  deeply 
sunk  in  ways  of  debauchery  than  any  of  his  feL 
lows  ;  'tis  a  mother's  song  to  her  child  :  — 

"  Weep  not,  my  wanton,  smile  upon  my  knee, 
When  thou  art  old,  there's  grief  enough  for  thee. 
Streaming  tears  that  never  stint, 
Like  pearl-drops  from  a  flint, 


ROBERT  GREENE.  279 

Fell  by  course  from  his  eyes, 

That  one  another's  place  supplies. 

Thus  he  grieved  in  every  part, 

Tears  of  blood  fell  from  his  heart 

When  he  left  his  pretty  boy, 

Father's  sorrow  —  father's  joy. 

The  wanton  smiled,  father  wept, 

Mother  cried,  baby  leapt  ; 

More  he  crowed  more  we  cried, 

Nature  could  not  sorrow  hide  ; 

He  must  go,  he  must  kiss 

Child  and  mother  —  baby  bless — 

For  he  left  his  pretty  boy, 

Father's  sorrow,  father's  joy. 
Weep  not,  my  wanton,  smile  upon  my  knee, 
When  thou  art  old,  there's  grief  enough  for  thee." 

And  the  poet  wbo  wrote  tins  —  putting  tender- 
ness into  poems  of  tlie  affections,  and  a  glowing 
color  into  pastoral  verse,  and  point  and  delicacy 
into  his  prose  —  wrote  also  A  Groates  worth  of  Wit, 
bought  ivith  a  Million  of  Repentance,  and  he  died  of  a 
surfeit  on  pickled  herring  and  Kbenish  wine. 

In  that  '  Groat's  worth  of  Wit '  (published  after 
his  death)  there  is  a  memorable  line  or  two  — 
being  probably  the  first  contemporary  notice  of 
Shakespeare  that  still  has  currency  ;  and  it  is  in 
the  form  of  a  gibe :  — 


28o  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  KLiYCS. 

"There  is  an  upstart  crow,  beautified  with  our  feathers, 
that  with  his  Tygres  heart  wrapt  in  a  players  hide,  supposes 
hee  is  as  well  able  to  bombast  out  a  blauke-verse  as  the  best 
of  you  ;  and,  being  an  absolute  Johannes-fac-totura,  is  in 
his  owne  conceyt  the  onely  Shake-Scene  in  a  couutrey." 

How  (Irolly  it  sounds — to  hear  this  fino  fellow, 
broken  up  v;\i\i  drink  and  all  bedevilments,  making. 
his  envious  lunge  at  the  great  master  who  has  per 
haps  worried  him  by  theft  of  some  of  his  dramatic 
methods  or  schemes,  and  who  gives  to  poor  Greene 
one  of  his  largest  titles  to  fame  in  having  been  the 
subject  of  his  lampoon  ! 

It  gives  added  importance,  too,  to  this  gibe,  to 
know  that  it  was  penned  when  the  writer,  impov- 
erished, diseased,  deserted  by  patrons,  saw  death 
fronting  him  ;  and  it  gives  one's  heart  a  wrench  to 
read  how  this  debauched  poet  —  whose  work  has 
given  some  of  the  best  color  to  the  "  Winter's  Tale  " 
of  Shakespeare  —  writes  with  faltering  hand,  beg' 
giug  his  "  gentle "  wife's  forgiveness,  and  that  she 
would  see  that  the  charitable  host,  who  has  taken 
him  in,  for  his  last  illness,  shall  suffer  no  loss 
—  then,  toying  with  the  sheets,  and  "babbling  o' 
green  fields,"  he  dies. 

Keen  critics  of  somewhat  later  days  said  Shake- 


EARL    OF  SOUTHAMPTON.  281 

speare  had  Greene's  death  in   mind  when  he  told 
the  story  of  Falstaff's. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  all  these  men  I  have 
named  will  haye  encountered,  off  and  on,  at  their 
tavern  gatherings,  the  lithe,  youngish  fellow,  large 
browed  and  with  flashing  eyes,  who  loves  Ehenish 
too  in  a  way,  but  who  loves  the  altitudes  of  poetic 
thought  better  ;  who  is  just  beginning  to  be  known 
poet-wise  by  his  "  Venus  and  Adonis  "  —  whose 
name  is  William  Shakespeare  —  and  who  has  great 
aptitude  at  fixing  a  play,  whether  his  own  or  an- 
other man's ;  and  with  Burbage  for  the  leading 
parts,  can  make  them  take  wonderfully  well. 

Possibly,  too,  in  these  tavern  gatherings  would 
be  the  young,  boyish  Earl  of  Southampton,  who  is 
associated  with  some  of  the  many  enigmas  respect- 
ing Shakespeare's  Sonnets,  and  whom  we  Ameri- 
cans ought  to  know  of,  because  he  became  inter- 
ested thereafter  in  schemes  for  colonizing  Virginia, 
and  has  left  his  name  of  Southampton  to  one  of 
the  Virginia  counties;  and,  still  better,  is  associ- 
ated with  that  beautiful  reach  of  the  Chesapeake 
waters  which  we  now  call  "Hampton  Koads." 

Li   that    company   too  —  familiar   with    London 


282  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &^  ALNGS. 

taverns  in  later  Elizabethan  years  —  the  beefy  Ben 
Jonsou  was  sure  to  appear,  with  his  great  shag 
of  hair,  and  his  fine  eye,  and  his  coarse  lip,  bub- 
bling over  with  wit  and  with  Latin  :  he,  quite 
young  as  yet ;  perhaps  just  now  up  from  Cam- 
bridge ;  ten  years  the  junior  of  Shakespeare ;  and 
yet  by  his  bulky  figure  and  doughty  air  dominating 
his  elders,  and  sure  to  call  the  attention  of  all  idlers 
who  hung  about  the  doors  of  the  Mermaid.  He 
may  be  even  now  plotting  his  first  play  of  "  Every 
Man  in  his  Humour,"  or  that  new  club  of  his  and 
Raleigh's  devising,  which  is  to  have  its  meeting  of 
jolly  fellows  in  the  same  old  Cheapside  tavern,  and 
to  make  its  rafters  shake  with  their  uproarious 
mirth.  For  the  present  we  leave  them  all  there  — 
with  a  May  sun  struggling  through  London  fogs,  and 
gleaming  by  fits  and  starts  upon  the  long  range  of 
jewellers'  shops,  for  which  Cheapside  was  famous  — 
upon  the  White  Cross  and  Conduit,  whereat  the  shop- 
girls are  filling  their  pails  —  upon  the  great  country 
wains  coming  in  by  Whitechapel  Road  —  upon  the  tall 
spire  of  St.  Mary  le  Bow,  and  upon  the  diamond  panes 
of  the  Mermaid  tavern,  to  whose  recesses  we  have 
just  seen  the  burly  figure  of  Ben  Jonson  swagger  in. 


CHAPTER  Vni. 

IN  opening  the  preceding  chapter  I  spoke  of 
that  dainty  John  Lyly,  who  first  set  a  fashion 
in  letters,  and  whose  daintiness  hid  much  of  the 
strength  and  cleverness  that  were  in  him  :  I  spoke 
of  the  wonderful  twin  development  of  the  Lord 
Chancellor  Bacon  — selfish  and  ignoble  as  a  man, 
serene  and  exalted  as  a  philosopher  ;  and  I  tried  to 
fasten  ia  the  reader's  mind  the  locality  of  his  tomb 
and  home  at  the  old  town  of  St.  Alban's  —  a  short 
coach-ride  away  from  London,  down  in  "pleasant 
Hertfordshire  : "  I  spoke  of  Hobbes  (somewhat  be- 
fore his  turn)  whose  free-thinking  —  of  great  influ- 
ence in  its  day,  and  the  sharply  succeeding  days  — 
is  supplemented  by  more  acute  and  subtle,  if  not 
more  far-reaching,  free-thinking  now.  I  quoted  Uie 
Homer  of  Chapman,  under  whose  long  and  stagger- 
ing lines  there  burned  always  true  Homeric  fire. 
I   cited   Marlowe,    because   his   youth   and    power 


2S4  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &-  A'LVGS. 

promised  so  much,  and  tlie  promise  so  soon  ended 
in  an  earlj'  and  inglorious  death.  Then  came 
Lodge,  Nashe,  and  Greene,  mates  of  Marlowe,  all 
■well-bred,  all  having  an  itch  for  penwork,  and  some 
of  them  for  the  stage  ;  all  making  rendezvous  — 
what  time  they  were  in  London  —  at  some  tavern 
of  Bankside,  or  at  the  Mermaid,  where  we  caught  a 
quick  glimpse  of  Ben  Jonson,  and  another  of  the 
Stratford  player. 

George  Peele. 

I  might,  however,  have  added  to  the  lesser  names 
that  decorated  the  closing  years  of  the  sixteenth 
century  that  of  George  Peele,*  of  Devonshire 
birth,  but,  like  so  many  of  his  fellows,  a  university 
man  :  he  came  to  be  a  favorite  in  London  ;  loved 
taverns  and  wine  as  unwisely  as  Greene  ;  was  said 
to  have  great  tact  for  the  ordering  of  showy  pag- 
eants ;  did  win  upon  Queen  Elizabeth  by  his  "Ar- 
raignment of  Paris"  (half  masque  and  half  play) 
represented  by  the  children  of  the  Chapel  Koyal  — 
and  carrying  luscious  flattery  to  the  ready  ears  of 
Eliza,  Queen  of — 


'B.   1558  or  thereabout;   and  d.    1598. 


GEORGE  PEELE.  285 

"An  ancient  seat  of  Kings,  a  second  Troj, 
Y'compassed  round  with  a  commanding  sea ; 
Her  people  are  j-cleped  Angeli. 
This  paragon,  this  only,  this  is  she 
In  whom  do  meet  so  many  gifts  in  one 
In  honor  of  whose  name  the  muses  sing." 

Yet  even  such  praises  did  not  keep  poor  Peele 
■Trom  liard  fare  and  a  stinging  lack  of  mone3^ 

"An  Old  Wives  Tale,"  which  he  wrote,  has  con- 
jurers and  dragons  in  it,  with  odd  twists  of  lan- 
guage which  remind  one  of  the  kindred  and  non- 
sensical jingle  of  "Patience  "  or  "Pinafore  : "  — 

"Phillida,  Philleridos  —  pamphilida,  florida,  flortos; 
Dub  —  duba-dub,  bounce!   quoth  the  guns 
With  a  sulpherous  huff-snuff !  " 

This  play  is  further  notable  for  having  supplied 
much  of  the  motive  for  the  machinery  and  move- 
ment of  Milton's  noble  poem  of  Comus.  It  is 
worth  one's  while  to  compare  the  two.  Of  course 
Peele  will  suffer  —  as  those  who  make  beginnings 
always  do. 

This  writer  is  said  to  have  been  sometime  a 
shareholder  with  Shakespeare  in  the  Blackfriars 
Theatre ;  he  was  an  actor,  too,  like  his  great  con- 
temporary ;  and  besides  the  inlays  which  carried  a 


286  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &■>  KLNGS. 

wordy  bounce  in  them,  wrote  a  very  tender  scriptu- 
ral drama  about  King  David  and  the  fair  Bethsabe, 
with  charming-  quotable  things  in  it.     Thus  — 

"  Bright  Betlisabe  gives  earth  to  my  desires, 
Verdure  to  earth,  and  to  that  verdure  —  flowers; 
To  flowers  —  sweet  odors,  and  to  odors  ■ —  wings 
That  carries  pleasure  to  the  hearts  of  Kings!  " 

And  again  : — 

"Now  comes  my  lover  tripping  like  the  roe, 
And  brings  my  longings  tangled  in  her  hair 
To  joy  her  love,  I'll  build  a  Kingly  bower 
Seated  in  hearing  of  a  hundred  streams." 

Tom  Campbell  said  — "  there  is  no  such  sweet- 
ness to  be  found  in  our  blank  verse  anterior  to 
Shakespeare."  And  for  his  lyrical  gi-ace  I  can- 
not resist  this  little  show,  from  his  "  Arraignment 
of  Paris:"  — 

uEjwne  [singeth  andpipetK], 

"  Fair  and  fair,  and  twice  so  fair, 

As  fair  as  any  may  be  ; 

The  fairest  shepherd  on  our  green, 

A  love  for  any  lady." 
And  Paris. 

"  Fair  and  fair  and  twice  so  fair, 

As  fair  as  any  may  be  : 

Thy  love  is  fair  for  thee  alone 

And  for  no  other  lady. " 


THOMAS  DEKKER.  287 

Then  JEnone. 

"  My  love  is  fair,  mj  love  is  gay, 
As  fresh  as  bin  the  flowers  in  May, 
And  of  my  love  my  roundelay, 
My  merry,  merry,  merry  roundelay, 
Concludes  with  Cupid's  curse, 
They  that  do  change  old  love  for  new, 
Pray  Gods,  they  change  for  worse!  " 


Tftomas  DeJcker. 

Delcker  was  fellow  of  Peele  and  of  the  rest ;  *  he 
quarrelled  bitterly  with  Ben  Jonson — they  beating 
each  other  vilely  with  bad  words,  that  can  be  read 
now  (by  whoso  likes  such  reading)  in  the  Poetas- 
ter of  Jonson,  or  in  the  Satiromastix  of  Dekker. 
'Twould  be  unfair,  however,  to  judge  him  altogether 
by  his  play  of  the  cudgels  in  this  famous  contro- 
versy. There  is  good  meat  in  what  Dekker  wrote  : 
he  had  humor ;  he  had  pluck  ;  he  had  gift  for  us- 
ing words  —  to  sting  or  to  praise  —  or  to  beguile 
one.     There  are  traces  not  only  of  a  Dickens  flavor 

*  Thomas  Dekker,  b.  about  1568  ;  d.  about  1640.  Best 
edition  of  his  miscellaneous  works  that  of  Grosart  (Huth 
Library),  which  is  charming  in  its  print  and  its  pictures  — • 
even  to  the  poet  in  his  bed,  busy  at  his  Dreume. 


2S8  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &^  KLYGS. 

in  liim,  but  of  a  Lamb  flavor  as  well ;  and  there  is 
reason  to  believe  that,  like  both  these  later  humor- 
ists, he  made  his  conquests  without  the  support 
of  a  university  training.  Swinburne  characterizes 
him  as  a  "modest,  shiftless,  careless  nature:"  but 
he  was  keen  to  thrust  a  pin  into  one  who  had  of- 
fended his  sensibilities;  in  his  plays  he  warmed 
into  pretty  lyrical  outbreaks,  but  never  seriously 
measured  out  a  work  of  large  proportions,  or  en- 
tered upon  execution  of  such  with  a  calm,  persever- 
ing temper.  He  was  many-sided,  not  only  literary- 
wise,  but  also  conscience-wise.  It  seems  incredible 
that  one  who  should  write  the  coarse  things  which 
appear  in  his  Bachelor's  Banquet  should  also  have 
elaborated,  with  a  pious  unction  (that  reminds 
of  Jeremy  Taylor)  the  saintly  invocations  of  the 
Foure  Birds  of  Noah's  Ark :  and  as  for  his  Dreavie 
it  shows  in  parts  a  luridness  of  color  which  re- 
minds of  our  own  Wigglesworth  —  as  if  this 
New  England  poet  of  fifty  years  later  may  have 
dipped  his  brush  into  the  same  paint-pot.  I  cite 
a  warm  fragment  from  his  Dreams  of  the  Last  Judge- 
meat ; — 


THOMAS  DEKKER,  289 

"Their  cv'es,  nor  yelling  did  the  Judge  regard, 
For  all  the  doores  of  Mercy  up  were  bar'd  : 
Justice  and  Wrath  in  wrinkles  knit  his  forhead, 
And  thus  he  spake  :  You  cursed  and  abhorred, 
You  brood  of  Sathan,  sonnes  of  death  and  hell, 
In  fires  that  still  shall  burne,  you  still  shall  dwell; 
In  hoopes  of  Iron :  then  were  they  bound  up  strong, 
(Shrikes  [shrieks]  being  the  Burden  of  their  dolefull  song) 
Scarce  was  Sentence  breath  d-out,  but  mine  eies 
Even  saw  (me  thought)  a  Caldron,  whence  did  rise 
A  pitchy  Steeme  of  Sulphure  and  thick  Smoake, 
Able  whole  coapes  of  Firmament  to  choake  : 
About  this,  Divels  stood  round,  still  blowing  the  fire, 
Some,  tossing  Soules,  some  whipping  them  with  wire, 
Across  the  face,  as  up  to  th'  chins  they  stood 
In  boyling  brimstone,  lead  and  oyle,  and  bloud." 


It  is,  however,  as  a  social  photographer  that  I 
wish  to  call  special  attention  to  Dekker  ;  indeed,  his 
little  touches  upon  dress,  dinners,  bear-baitings, 
watermen,  walks  at  Powles,  Spanish  boots,  tavern 
orgies  —  though  largely  ironical  and  much  exag- 
gerated doubtless,  have  the  same  elements  of  nat- 
ure in  them  which  people  catch  now  with  their 
pocket  detective  cameras.  His  Sinnes  of  London, 
his  answer  to  Pierce  Pennilesse,  his  Gull's  Home 
Booke  are  full  of  these  sketches.     This  which  fol- 


290  LANDS,   LETTERS,    £-  KLXGS. 

lows,  tells  how  a  young  gallant  should  behave  him- 
self in  an  ordinary  : — 

"Being  arrived  in  the  room,  salute  not  any  but  those  of 
your  acquaintance  ;  walke  up  and  downs  by  the  rest  as 
scornfully  and  as  carelessly  as  a  Gentleman-Usher  :  Select 
some  friend  (having  first  throwne  off  your  cloake)  to  walke 
up  and  downe  the  roome  with  you,  .  .  .  and  this  will 
be  a  meanes  to  publish  your  clothes  better  than  Powles,  a 
Tennis-court,  or  a  Playhouse  ;  discourse  as  lowd  as  you  can, 
no  matter  to  what  purpose  if  you  but  make  a  noise,  and 
laugh  in  fashion,  and  have  a  good  sower  face  to  promise 
quarrelling,  you  shall  be  much  observed. 

"  If  you  be  a  souldier,  talke  how  often  you  have  beene  in 
action  :  as  the  Portingale  voiage,  Cales  voiage,  besides  some 
eight  or  nine  imploiments  in  Ireland.  .  .  .  And  if  you 
perceive  that  the  untravell*  Company  about  you  take  this 
doune  well,  ply  them  with  more  such  stuffe,  as  how  you 
have  interpreted  betweene  the  French  king  and  a  great  Lord 
of  Barbary,  when  they  have  been  drinking  healthes  together, 
and  that  will  be  an  excellent  occasion  to  publish  your  lan- 
guages, if  you  have  them  :  if  not,  get  some  fragments  of 
French,  or  smal  parcels  of  Italian,  to  fling  about  the  table : 
but  beware  how  you  speake  any  Latine  there." 

And  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  the  three-penny  ta- 
bles and  the  twelve-penny  tables,  and  of  the  order 
in  which  meats  should  be  eaten  —  all  which  as  giv- 
ing glimpses  of  something  like  the  every-day,  actual 
life  of  the  ambitious   and   the  talked-of  voung  fel- 


MICHAEL  DRAYTON.  291 

lows  about   Loudon  streets   and  taverns  is  better 
worth  to  us  than  Dekker's  dramas. 


Michael   Drayton. 

"We  encounter  next  a  personage  of  a  different 
stamp,  and  one  who,  very  likely,  would  have  shaken 
his  head  in  sage  disapproval  of  the  flippant  advices 
of  Dekker  ;  I  refer  to  Michael  Drayton,*  who  wrote 
enormously  in  verse  upon  all  imaginable  subjects  ; 
there  are  elegiacs,  canzonets,  and  fables  ;  there  are 
eclogues,  and  heroic  epistles  and  legends  and 
NimpJiidia  and  sonnets.  He  tells  of  the  Barons' 
Wars,  of  the  miseries  of  Queen  Margaret,  of  how 
David  killed  Goliath,  of  Moses  in  the  burning  bush 
—  in  lines  counting  by  thousands  ;  Paradise  Lost 
stretched  six  times  over  would  not  equal  his  pile 
of  print  ;  and  all  the  verse  that  Goldsmith  ever 
wrote,  compared  with  Drayton's  portentous  mass 
would  seem  like  an  iridescent  bit  of  cockle-shell 
upon  a  sea  of  ink.  This  protracting  writer  was  a 
Warwickshire    man  —  not  a  far-off  countryman   of 

*  Drayton,  b.  1563  ;  d.  1631.  An  edition  of  his  works 
(still  incomplete)  by  Rev.  U.  Hooper  is  the  most  recent. 


292  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &-  KINGS. 

Shakespeare,  and  a  year  only  Lis  senior  ;  a  respect- 
able personage,  not  joining  in  tavern  bouts,  caring 
for  himself  and  living  a  long  life.  His  great  poem 
of  Poly-olbion  many  know  by  name,  and  very  few,  I 
think,  of  this  generation  ever  read  through.  It  is 
about  the  mountains,  rivers,  wonders,  pleasures, 
flowers,  trees,  stories,  and  antiquities  of  England  ; 
and  it  is  twenty  thousand  lines  long,  and  every  line 
a  long  Alexandrine.  Yet  there  are  pictures  ant] 
prettinesses  in  it,  which  properly  segregated  and 
detached  from  the  wordy  trails  which  go  before  and 
after  them,  would  make  the  fortune  of  a  small  poet. 
There  are  descriptions  in  it,  valuable  for  their  utter 
fidelity  and  a  fulness  of  nomenclature  which  keeps 
alive  pleasantly  ancient  names.  Here,  for  instance, 
is  a  summing  up  of  old  English  wild-flowers,  where, 
in  his  quaint  way,  he  celebrates  the  nuj)tials  of  t"l:e 
river  Thames  (who  is  groom)  with  the  bridal  Isis, 
that  flows  by  Oxford  towers.  It  begins  at  the  one 
hundred  and  fiftieth  line  of  the  fifteenth  song  of  the 
fiftieth  part :  — 

"  The  Primrose  placing  first,  because  that  in  the  Spring 
It  is  the  first  appears,  then  only  flourishing  ; 
The  azured  Hare-bell  next,  with  them  they  gently  mix'd 


MICHAEL  DRAYTON.  293 

T'  allaj  whose  luscious  smell,  they  Woodbine  plac'd  be- 
twixt ; 
Amongst  those  things  of  scent,  there   prick  they  in  the 

Lily, 

And  near  to  that  again,  her  sister  —  Daffodilly 

To  sort  these  flowers  of  show,  with  th'  other  that  were  so 

sweet, 
The   Cowslip  then  they   couch,    and  the  Oxlip,    for  her 

meet ; 
The  Columbine  amongst,  they  sparingly  do  set, 
The  yellow  King-cup  wrought  in  many  a  curious  fret; 
And  now  and  then  among,  of  Eglantine  a  spray. 
By  which  again  a  course  of  Lady-smocks  they  lay  ; 
The  Crow-flower,  and  thereby  the  Clover-flower  they  stick, 
The  Daisy  over  all  those  sundry  sweets  so  thick." 

The  garden-flowers  follow  iu  equal  fulness  of 
array  ;  and  get  an  even  better  setting  in  one  of  his 
Nymphals,  where  they  are  garlanded  about  the 
head  of  Tita  ;  and  in  these  pretty  Nymphals,  and 
still  more  in  the  airy,  fairy  Nymphidia  —  with  their 
elfins  and  crickets  and  butterflies,  one  will  get  an 
earlier  smack  of  our  own  "  Culprit  Fay."  Those  who 
love  the  scents  of  ancient  garden-grounds  —  as  we 
do  —  will  relish  the  traces  of  garden  love  in  this  old 
Warwickshire  man.  In  his  Heroic  Epistles,  too, 
one  will  find  a  mastership  of  ringing  couplets  :  and 
there   are   spirit  and  dash  in  that  clanging  battle 


294  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &-  KINGS. 

ode  of  his  which  sets  forth  the  honors  and  the 
daring  of  Agincourt.  Its  martial  echoes  —  kept 
ahve  by  Campbell  ("Battle  of  the  Baltic")  and  re- 
vived again  in  Tennyson's  "Balaclava,"  warrant  me 
in  citing  two  stanzas  of  the  original :  — 

"  Warwick  in  blood  did  wade, 
Oxford  the  foe  invade, 
And  cruel  slaughter  made 

Still  as  they  ran  up  ; 
Suffolk  his  axe  did  plj, 
Beaumont  and  Willoughby 
Bear  them  right  doughtily, 

Ferrers  and  Fanhope. 

"They  now  to  fight  are  gone  ; 
Armour  on  armour  shone, 
Drum  now  to  drum  did  groan, 

To  hear,  was  wonder  ; 
That,  with  the  cries  they  make, 
The  very  earth  did  shake, 
Trumpet  to  trumpet  spake, 
Thunder  to  thunder."  * 

*  There  is  an  exquisite  sonnet  usually  attributed  to  him 
beginning  —  "Since  there's  no  help,  come  let  us  kiss  and 
part ;  "  but  this  is  so  very  much  better  than  all  liis  other 
sonnets,  that  I  cannot  help  sharing  the  doubts  of  those  who 
question  its  Drayton  origin.  If  Drayton's  own,  the  sonnet 
certainly  shows  a  delicacy  of  expression,  and  a  romanticism 
of  hue  quite  exceptional  with  him. 


BEN  JONSON.  293 

Ben  Jonson. 

I  now  go  back  to  that  friend  of  Drayton's  — 
Ben  Jonson,*  wliom  we  saw  at  the  closing  of  the 
last  chapter  going  into  the  tavern  of  the  Mermaid. 
He  goes  there,  or  to  other  like  places,  very  often. 
He  is  a  friend  no  doubt  of  the  landlady  ;  he  is  a 
friend,  too,  of  all  the  housemaids,  and  talks  uni- 
versity chaff  to  them  ;  a  friend,  too,  of  all  such 
male  frequenters  of  the  house  as  will  listen  to 
him,  and  will  never  dispute  him  ;  otherwise  he  is 
a  slang-whanger  and  a  bear. 

He  was  born,  as  I  have  said,  some  years  after 
Shakespeare,  but  had  roared  himself  into  the  front 
ranks  before  the  people  of  London  were  thoroughly 
satisfied  that  the  actor-author  of  "  Eichard  HI."  was 
a  better  man  than  Ben.  Very  much  of  gossip  with 
respect  to  possible  jealousies  between  Shakespeare 
and  Ben  Jonson  may  be  found  in  the  clumsy, 
bundled-up  life  of  the  latter  by  William  Gifford.f 

*  Ben  Jonson,  b.  1573  ;  d.  1637. 

•(■  Prefacing  the  edition  of  Jonson's  works  of  1816 ;  also 
in  the  elegant  reissue  of  the  same  —  under  editorship  of 
Colonel  Cunningham  in  1875.     Gifford  seems  to  have  spent 


296  LANDS,  LETTERS,  £-  KINGS. 

Jonson  was  boi-n  probably  in  the  west  of  Lon- 
don —  and  born  poor  ;  but  through  the  favor  of 
some  friends  went  to  Westminster  School,  near 
to  which  his  step-father,  who  was  a  bricklayer, 
lived :  afterward,  through  similar  favor,  he  went 
to  Cambridge  *  —  not  staying  very  long,  because 
called  home  to  help  that  stej^-father  at  his  brick- 
laying. Bat  he  did  stay  long  enough  to  get  a  tho- 
rough taste  for  learning,  and  a  thorough  ground- 
ing in  it.  So  he  fretted  at  the  bricks,  and  ran  off 
and  enlisted  —  serving  a  while  in  the  Low  Coun- 
tries, where  poor  Philip  Sidney  met  his  death, 
and  coming  back,  a  swaggerer,  apt  with  his  sword 
and  his  speech,  into  which  he  had  grafted  conti- 
nentalisms ;  apt  at  a  quarrel,  too,  and  comes  to 
fight  a  duel,  and  to  kill  his   man.f      For  this  he 

his  force  (of  a  biographic  sort)  iu  picking  up  from  various 
contemporary  authors  whatever  contained  a  sneer  at  Jonson, 
and  exploding  it,  after  blowing  it  up  to  its  fullest  possible 
dimensions  ;  —  reminding  one  of  those  noise-loving  boys 
who  blow  up  discarded  and  badly  soiled  paper-bags,  only 
to  burst  them  on  their  knees. 

*  Ward  {Ency.  Br.)  is  inclined  to  doubt  his  going  at  all  to 
Cambridge ;  I  prefer,  however,  to  follow  the  current  belief 
—  as  not  yet  sufficiently  "  upset." 

f  The    facts    regarding  this  "felony"  of    Jonson's    have 


BEN  JONSON.  297 

went  to  prison,  getting  material  this  way  —  by 
hard  rubs  with  the  world  —  for  the  new  work  which 
was  ripening  in  the  mind  of  this  actor-author. 
So,  full  of  all  experiences,  full  of  Latin,  full  of 
logic,  full  of  history,  full  of  quarrel,  full  of  wine 
(most  whiles)  this  great,  beefy  man  turned  poet. 
I  do  not  know  if  you  will  read  —  do  not  think  the 
average  reader  of  to-day  will  care  to  study  —  his 
dramas.  The  stories  of  them  are  involved,  but 
nicely  adjusted  as  the  parts  of  an  intricate  ma- 
chine :  you  will  grow  tired,  I  dare  say,  of  matching 
part  to  part  ;  tired  of  their  involutions  and  evo- 
lutions ;  tired  of  the  puppets  in  them  that  keep 
the  machinery  going  ;  tired  of  the  passion  torn  to 
tatters  ;  tired  of  the  unrest  and  lack  of  all  repose. 
Yet  there  are  abounding  evidences  of  wit — of  more 
learning  than  in  Shakespeare,  and  a  great  deal 
drearier ;  aptnesses  of  expression,  too,  which  show 
a  keen  knowledge  of  word-meanings  and  of  etymol- 
ogies ;    real   and   deep   acquirement  manifest,  but 

been  subject  of  mucli  and  varied  averment :  recent  inves- 
tigation has  brouglit  to  light  the  "Indictment"  on  which 
he  was  arraigned,  and  some  notes  of  the  "  Clerk  of  the 
Peace."    See  Athenmum,  March  6,  1886. 


298  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &>  A'LYGS. 

Avorn  like  stiff  brocade,  or  jingling  at  bis  pace,  like 
bells  upon  the  heels  of  a  savage.  You  wonder  to 
find  such  occasional  sense  of  music  with  such  heavy 
step  —  such  delicate  poise  of  such  gross  corpo- 
rosity. 

He  helped  some  hack-writer  to  put  Bacon's  es- 
says into  Latin  —  not  that  Bacon  did  not  know 
his  Latin  ;  but  the  great  chancellor  had  not 
time  for  the  graces  of  scholastics.  Ben  wrote 
an  English  Grammar,  too,  which  —  for  its  syn- 
tax, so  far  as  one  may  judge  from  that  compend 
of  it  which  alone  remains  —  is  as  good  as  al- 
most any  man  could  invent  now.  Such  learnincr 
weighed  him  down  when  he  put  on  the  buskins, 
and  made  the  stage  tremble  with  his  heaviness. 
But  when  he  was  at  play  with  letters  —  when 
he  had  no  plot  to  contrive  and  fabricate  and 
foster,  and  no  character  to  file  and  finish,  and 
file  again,  and  to  fit  in  with  precise  order  and 
methodic  juxtaposition  —  when  a  mad  holiday 
masque  —  wild  as  the  "Pirates  of  Penzance"  — 
tempted  him  to  break  out  into  song,  his  verse  is 
rampant,  joyous,  exuberant  —  blithe  and  dewy  as 
the  breath  of  May-day  mornings :  See  how  a  little 


BEN   JONSON.  299 

daiTJsel  iu  the  dance  of  his  verse  sways  and  pirou- 
ettes — 

"  As  if  the  wind,  not  she  did  walk ; 

Nor  pressed  a  flower,  nor  bowed  a  stalk !  " 

Then,  again,  in  an  Epithalamion  of  his  Under- 
woods,  as  they  were  called,  there  is  a  fragment  of 
verse,  which,  in  many  of  its  dehcious  couplets,  shows 
the  grace  and  art  of  Spenser's  wonderful  "  Epitha- 
lamion," which  we  read  a  little  time  ago  : — He  is 
picturing  the  bridesmaids  strewing  the  bride's  path 
with  flowers  :  — 

•'  With  what  full  hands,  and  iu  how  plenteous  showers 
Have  they  bedewed  the  earth  where  she  doth  tread, 
As  if  her  airy  steps  did  spring  the  flowers, 

And  all  the  ground  were  garden,  where  she  led." 

Such  verses  do  not  come  often  into  our  news- 
paper corners,  from  first  hands  :  such  verses  make 
one  understand  the  significance  of  that  inscription 
which  came  by  merest  accident  to  be  written  on  his 
tomb  in  Westminster  Abbey  —  "0  rare  Ben  Jon- 
son  ! " 

I  do  not  believe  I  shall  fatigue  you  —  and  I  know 
I  shall  keep  you  iu  the  way  of  good  things  if  I  give 


300  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  AVNGS. 

juiother  fragment  from  one  of  liis  festal  operettas  ; 
—  the  "  Angel "  is  describing  and  symbolizing 
Truth,  in  the  Masque  of  Hymen  : — 


"  Upon  her  head  she  wears  a  crown  of  stars, 
Thro'  which  her  orient  liair  waves  to  lier  waist, 
By  which  believing  mortals  hold  her  fast, 
And  in  those  golden  cords  are  carried  even 
Till  with  her  breath  she  blows  them  up  to  Heaven. 
She  wears  a  robe  enchased  with  eagles'  eyes, 
To  signify  her  sight  in  mysteries  ; 
Upon  each  shoulder  sits  a  milk-white  dove. 
And  at  her  feet  do  witty  serpents  move  ; 
Her  spacious  arms  do  reach  from  East  to  west, 
And  you  may  see  her  heart  shine  thro'  her  breast. 
Her  right  hand  holds  a  sun  with  burning  rays 
Her  left,  a  curious  bunch  of  golden  keys 
With  which  Heaven's  gates  she  locketh  and  displays. 
A  crystal  mirror  hangeth  at  her  breast, 
By  which  men's  consciences  are  searched  and  drest; 
On  her  coach-wheels,  Hypocrisy  lies  racked; 
And  squint-eyed  Slander  with  Vain  glory  backed. 
Her  bright  eyes  burn  to  dust,  in  which  shines  Fate  ; 
An  Angel  ushers  lier  triumphant  gait, 
Whilst  with  her  fingers  fans  of  stars  she  twists, 
And  with  them  beats  back  Error,  clad  in  mists, 
Eternal  Unity  behind  her  shines, 
That  Fire  and  Water,  Earth  and  Air  combines ; 
Her  voice  is  like  a  trumpet,  loud  and  shrill, 
Which  bids  all  sounds  in  earth  and  heaven  be  still." 


BEN   JONS  ON.  301 

In  that  line  of  work  Shakespeare  never  did  a 
better  thing  than  this.  Indeed,  in  those  days 
many,  perhaps  most,  people  of  learning  and  culture 
thought  Ben  Jonson  the  better  man  of  the  two  ;  — 
more  instructed  (as  he  doubtless  was) ;  with  a  nicer 
knowledge  of  the  unities  ;  a  nicer  knowledge  of 
mere  conventionalities  of  all  sorts  :  Shakespeare 
was  a  humble,  plain  Warwickshire  man,  with  no 
fine  tinsel  to  his  wardrobe  —  had  no  university 
training;  not  so  much  schooling  or  science  of 
any  sort  as  Ben  Jonson  ;  had  come  up  to  Lon- 
don —  as  would  seem  —  to  make  his  fortune,  to 
get  money  —  to  blaze  his  way  :  and  how  he  did 
it! 

I  suppose  a  Duchess  of  Buckingham  or  any 
lady  of  court  consequence  would  have  been  rather 
proud  of  the  obeisance  of  Ben  Jonson,  after  that 
play  of  "Every  Man  in  his  Humour,"  and  would 
have  given  him  a  commendatory  wave  of  her  fan, 
much  sooner,  and  more  unhesitatingly,  than  to  the 
Stratford  actor,  who  took  the  part  of  Old  Knowell 
in  it.  Ben  believed  in  conventional  laws  of  speech 
or  of  dramatic  utterance  far  more  than  Shakespeare  ; 
he    regi*etted  (or   perhaps  affected  to  regret  when 


302  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &^  KINGS. 

liis  jealousies  were  sleeping),  that  Will  Shakespeare 
did  not  shape  his  language  and  his  methods  with  a 
severer  art ;  *  he  would  —  vei'y  likely  —  have  lashed 
hiiu,  if  he  had  been  under  him  at  school,  for  his 
irregularities  of  form  and  of  speech  —  irregularities 
that  grew  out  of  Shakespeare's  domination  of  the 
language,  and  his  will  and  his  power  to  make  it,  in 
all  subtlest  phases,  the  servant,  and  not  the  master 
of  his  thought. 

Do  I  seem,  then,  to  be  favoring  the  breakage  of 
customs,  and  of  the  rules  of  particular  gramma- 
rians? Yes,  unhesitatingly  —  if  you  have  the  mas- 
tery to  do  it  as  Shakespeare  did  it ;  that  is,  if  3'ou 
have  that  finer  sense  of  the  forces  and  delicacies  of 
language  which  will  enable  you  to  wrest  its  periods 
out  of  the  ruts  of  every-day  traffic,  and  set  them  to 
sonorous  roll  over  the  open  ground,  which  is  broad 
as   humanity   and   limitless    as    thought.      PaiTots 

*  In  liis  Discoveries  {De  Shakespeare)  Jonson  says,  "The 
players  have  often  mentioned  it  as  an  hononr  to  Shake- 
speare, that  in  his  writing  (whatsoever  he  penned)  he  never 
blotted  out  a  line.  My  answer  hath  been,  would  he  had 
blotted    a   thousand.      Which    they    thought   a   malevolent 

speech I  loved  the  man,  and  do   honour   his 

memory,  on  this  side  idolatry  as  much  as  any." 


SOME  PROSE   WRITERS.  303 

must  be  taught  to  prate,  j)article  by  particle  ;  but 
the  Bob-o-Lincolu  swings  himself  into  his  great 
flood  of  song  as  no  master  can  teach  him  to  sing. 

Even  now  we  do  not  bid  final  adieu  to  Ben  Jon- 
son  ;  but  hope  to  encounter  him  again  in  the  next 
reign  (that  of  James  I.)  through  the  whole  of  which 
he  carried  his  noisy  literary  mastership. 

Borne  Prose  Writers. 

You  must  not  believe,  because  I  have  kej)t  mainly 
by  poetic  writers  in  these  later  days  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  that  there  were  no  men  who  wrote 
prose  —  none  who  wrote  travels,  histories,  letters 
of  advice ;  none  who  wrote  stupid,  dull,  goodish 
books ;  alas,  there  were  plenty  of  them  ;  there  al- 
ways are. 

But  there  were  some  to  be  remembered  too : 
there  was  William  Camden  —  to  whom  I  have 
briefly  alluded  already  —  and  of  whom,  when  you 
read  good  histories  of  this  and  preceding  reigns, 
you  will  find  frequent  mention.  He  was  a  learned 
man,  and  a  kind  man,  excellent  antiquarian,  and 
tauQ-ht  Ben  Jonson  at  Westminster  School.     There 


304  LANDS,  LETTERS,  >5-  KL\'GS. 

was  Stow,*  who  wrote  a  Savvey  of  London,  which  he 
knew  from  top  to  bottom.  He  was  born  in  the 
centre  of  it,  and  as  a  boy  used  to  fetch  milk  from  a 
farm  at  the  Minories,  to  his  home  in  Cornhill,  where 
liis  father  was  a  tailor.  His  fulness,  his  truthful- 
ness, his  simplicities,  and  his  qaaintness  have  made 
his  chief  book  —  on  London  —  a  much-prized  one. 

Again  there  was  Hakluyt,  f  who  was  a  church 
official  over  in  Bristol,  and  wlio  compiled  Voyages 
of  English  seamen  which  are  in  every  well-ap- 
pointed library.  Dr.  Robertson  says  in  his  His- 
tory, "  England  is  more  indebted  [to  Hakluyt]  for 
its  American  possessions  than  to  any  man  of  that 
age."  Of  so  much  worth  is  it  to  be  a  good  geog- 
rapher! The  "Hakluyt  Society"  of  England  will 
be  his  enduring  monument. 

There  was  also  living  in  those  last  days  of  the 
sixteenth  centui*y  a  strange,  conceited,  curious  trav- 
elUng  man,  Tliomas  Corj'^t  |   by  name,  who  went 

*  John  Stow,  b.  1525  ;  d.  1605.  His  Survey  published  in 
1598  :  reprinted  over  and  over.  Edition  of  1876  has  illus- 
trations. 

f  Richard  Hakluyt,  b.  about  1553  ;  d.  1616. 

X  Thomas  Coryat,  b.  1577  ;  d.  1617.  Full  title  of  his  book 
is—  Coryat' s  Crudities  hastily  gobbled   up   in   Five   moneths 


CORY  ATS  CRUDITIES.  305 

on  foot  through  Europe,  and  published  (in  1611) 
what  he  called  —  with  rare  and  unwitting  perti- 
nence—  Coryat's  Crudities.  He  affixed  to  them 
complimentary  mention  of  himself  —  whimseys  b}' 
the  poets,  even  by  so  great  a  man  as  Ben  Jonson  — 
a  budget  of  queer,  half-flattering,  half-ironical  rig- 
marole, which  (having  plenty  of  money)  he  had  pro- 
cured to  be  written  in  his  favor ;  and  so  ushered  his 
book  into  the  world  as  something  worth  large  no- 
tice. He  would  have  made  a  capital  showman. 
He  had  some  training  at  Oxford,  and  won  his  way 
b}'  an  inflexible  persistence  into  familiarity  with 
men  of  rank,  who  made  a  butt  of  him.  With  a 
certain  gift  for  language  he  learned  Arabic  in  some 
one  of  his  long  journeyings,  was  said  to  have 
knowledge  of  Persian,  and  made  an  oration  in  that 
speech  to  the  Great  Mogul  —  with  nothing  but  lan- 
guage in  it.  His  Crudities  are  i-arely  read  ;  but 
some  letters  and  fragments  relating  to  later  travels 
of  his,  appear  in  Purchas'  Pilgrims.  He  lays  hold 
upon  peculiarities  and  littlenesses  of  life  in  his  work 

Travells  in  France,  Savoy,  Italy,  Rhetia,  commonly  called  the 
Orisons  Country,  Helvetia,  alias  Switzerland,  and  some  parts 
of  Germany  and  the  Netherlands. 
20 


3o6  LANDS,  LETTERS,   (S^*  KLNGS. 

■wliich  more  sensible  men  would  overlook,  and 
wbicli  give  a  certain  quaint  piquancy  to  what  he 
told  ;  and  we  listen,  as  one  might  listen  to  barbers 
or  dressmakers  who  had  just  come  back  from  Paris, 
and  would  tell  us  things  about  cravats  and  hair-oil 
and  street  sights  that  we  could  learn  no  other- 
wheres.    Coryat  says  :  — 

"  I  observe  a  custom  iu  all  those  Italian  Cities,  and  tounes 
thro'  the  which  I  passed,  that  is  not  used  in  any  other  coun- 
trie  that  I  saw  —  nor  do  I  think  that  any  other  nation  of 
Christendom  doth  use  it,  but  only  Italy.  The  Italian  and 
most  other  strangers  that  are  cormorant  in  Italy  doe  always 
at  their  meales  use  a  little  forke,  when  they  cut  their  meate. 
For  while,  with  their  knife  which  they  hold  in  one  hand 
they  cut  the  meate  out  of  the  dish,  they  fasten  the  forke 
which  they  hold  in  their  other  hand  upon  the  same  dish,  so 
that  whatsoever  he  be  that  sitting  in  the  compauie  of  any 
others  at  meale,  should  unadvisidly  touch  the  dish  of  meate 
with  his  fingers  from  which  alle  at  the  table  doe  cut,  he  will 
give  occasion  of  offence  unto  the  company,  as  having  trans- 
gressed the  laws  of  good  manners. 

"This  forme  of  feeding  is,  I  understand,  common  in  all 
places  of  Italy  —  their  forkes  being  for  the  most  part  made 
of  iron  or  Steele,  and  some  of  silver  —  but  these  are  used  only 
by  gentlemen. 

"I  myself  have  thought  good  to  imitate  the  Italy  fashion 
by  this  forked  cutting  of  meate  not  only  while  I  was  in  Italy, 
but  also  in  Germany,  and  oftentimes  in  England,  since  I 
came  home.'' 


LEONARD   WRIGHT.  307 

Thus  we  may  connect  the  history  of  silver  forks 
with  Tom  Coryat's  Crudities,  and  with  the  first  re- 
ported foot-journeys  of  an  Englishman  over  the 
length  and  breadth  of  Europe.  The  wits  may  have 
bantered  him  in  Elizabeth's  day ;  but  his  jouruey- 
iugs  were  opened  and  closed  under  James. 

Again,  there  were  books  which  had  a  little  of 
humor,  and  a  little  of  sentiment,  with  a  great  deal 
of  fable,  and  much  advice  in  them ;  as  a  sample  of 
which  I  may  name  Mr.  Leonard  Wright's  Displaie 
of  Duties,  deck't  with  sage  Sayings,  jyythie  Sentences, 
and  projDer  Similes:  Pleasant  to  read,  delightful  to 
hear,  and  prof  table  to  practice  :^-  By  which  singu- 
larly inviting  title  we  perceive  that  he  had  caught 
the  euphuistic  ways  of  Mr.  John  Lyly.  In  enumer- 
ating the  infelicities  of  a  man  who  marries  a 
shrew,  he  sa^'s  :  — 

"Hee  shall  find  compact  in  a  little  flesh  a  great  number  of 
hones  too  hard  to  digest.  And  therefore  some  doe  thinke 
wedlocke  to  be  that  same  purgatorie  which  some  learned 
divines  have  so  long  contended  about,  or  a  sharpe  penance 
to  bring  sinful  men  to  Heaven.  A  merry  fellow  hearing  a 
preacher   saye   in    his  sermon    that   whosoever   would    be 

*  First  published  in  1589. 


3o8  LANDS,  LETTERS,   &-  RLNCS 

saved  mast  take  up  and  beare  his  cross,  ran  straight  to  his 
wife,  and  cast  her  upon  his  back.  .  ,  .  Finally,  he  that 
will  live  quietly  in  wedlock  miast  be  courteous  in  speech, 
cheerful  in  countenance,  provident  for  his  house,  careful  to 
traine  up  his  children  in  virtue,  and  patient  in  bearing  the 
infirmities  of  his  wife.  Let  all  the  keys  hang  at  her  girdle, 
only  the  purse  at  his  own.  He  must  also  be  voide  of  jeal- 
ousy, which  is  a  vanity  to  think,  and  more  folly  to  suspect. 
For  eyther  it  needeth  not,  or  booteth  not,  and  to  be  jealous 
without  a  cause  is  the  next  way  to  have  a  cause." 

"This  is  the  only  way  to  make  a  woman  dum  : 
To  sit  and  smyle  aiad  laugh  her  out,  and  not  a  word  but 
Tnum  !  " 

Quite  another  style  of  man  was  Philip  Stubbes,* 
a  Puritan  reformer  —  not  to  be  confounded  with 
John  Stubbes  who  had  his  right  hand  cut  off,  by 
order  of  the  Queen,  for  writing  against  the  impro- 
priety and  villainy  of  her  prospective  marriage  with 
a  foreign  prince  —  but  a  kinsman  of  his,  who  wrote 
wrathily  against  masques  and  theatre-going  ;  whip- 
ping with  his  pen  all  those  roystering  poets  who 
made  dramas  or  madrigals,  all  the  fine-dressed 
gallants,  and  all  the  fans  and  ruffs  of  the  women  as 
so  many  weapons  of  Satan. 

•Dates  of  birth  and  death  uncertain.  His  Anntomie  of 
Abuses  first  published  in  1583. 


PHILIP  STUBBES.  309 

"One  arcli  or  piller,''  savs  he,  "wherewith  the  Devil's 
kingdome  of  great  ruffes  is  under  propped,  is  a  certain  kind 
of  liquid  matter  which  they  call  starch,  wherein  the  Devil 
hath  learned  them  to  wash  and  die  their  ruffes,  which,  be- 
ing drie,  will  stand  stiff  and  inflexible  about  their  neckes." 

And  he  tells  a  horrific  story  —  as  if  it  were  tnie 
—  about  an  unfortunate  wicked  lady,  who  being  in- 
vited to  a  wedding  could  not  get  her  ruff  stiffened 
and  plaited  as  she  wanted  ;  so  fell  to  swearing  and 
tearing,  and  vowed  "  that  the  Devil  might  have  her 
whenever  she  wore  neckerchers  again."  And  the 
Evil  One  took  her  at  her  word,  appearing  in  the 
guise  of  a  presentable  young  man  who  arranged 
her  ruffs 

«'  —  to  her  so  great  contentation  and  liking,  that  she  became 
enamored  with  him.  The  young  man  kissed  her,  in  the 
doing  whereof  he  writhed  her  neck  in  sunder,  so  she  died 
miserably  ;  her  body  being  straightwaies  changed  into  blue 
and  black  colors,  most  ugglesome  to  behold,  and  her  face 
most  deformed  and  fearful  to  look  upon.  This  being 
known  in  the  city  great  preparation  was  made  for  her 
burial,  and  a  rich  coffin  was  provided,  and  her  fearful  body 
was  laid  therein.  Four  men  assay' d  to  lift  up  the  corps, 
but  could  not  move  it.  Whereat  the  standers-by  —  mar- 
velling causing  the  coffin  to  be  opened  to  see  the  cause 
thereof,  found  the  body  to  be  taken  away,  and  a  blacke 
catte,  very  leaue  and  deformed,  sitting  in  the  coffin,   set- 


310  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &>  A'LVGS. 

ting  of  great  ruffes,  and  frizzling  of  haire,  to  the  great  feare 
and  wonder  of  all  the  beholders." 

We  do  not  preach  in  jnst  that  way  against  fash- 
ionable dressing  in  our  time. 

A  book  on  the  Arte  of  English  Poesie  belongs  to 
those  days  —  supposed  to  be  the  work  of  George 
Puttenham*  —  wx'itten  for  the  "recreation  and 
service  "  of  the  Queen  ;  it  has  much  good  counsel 
in  it  —  specially  in  its  latter  part ;  and  the  author 
says  he  wrote  it  to  "  help  the  gentlewomen  of  the 
Court  to  write  good  Poetry."  As  an  exampler, 
under  his  discussion  of  "Ornament,"  he  cites 
what  he  graciously  calls  a  "  sweet  and  sententious 
ditty "  from  the  Queen's  own  hand.  The  reader 
will  be  curious  perhaps  to  see  some  portion  of 
this  :  — 

"  The  doubt  of  future  foes,  exiles  my  present  joy, 
And    wit   me   warnes  to  shun  such  snares   as    threaten 

mine  annoy, 
For  falsehood  now  doth  flow,  and  subject  faith  doth  ebbe, 
Which  would  not  be,  if  reason  rul'd,   or  wisdome  wev'd 

the  webbe." 


*  George  Puttenham,  b.  about  1532  :   the   book  printed 
1589. 


QUEEN'S  POEMS.  311 

This  much  will  serve  for  our  republican  delec- 
tation ;  but  it  is  not  the  only  instance  in  which 
we  find  mention  of  her  Majesty's  dalliance  with 
verse  :  In  an  old  book  called  the  Garden  of  the 
Muses,  of  the  date  of  1600,  the  author  says  the 
flowers  are  gathered  out  of  many  excellent  speeches 
spoken  to  her  Majesty  at  triumphs,  masques,  and 
shows,  as  also  out  of  divers  choice  ditties  sung  to 
her ;  and  "  some  especially  proceeding  from  her 
own  most  sacred  selfe."  No  one  of  them,  however, 
would  have  ranked  her  with  any  of  the  poets  of 
whom  we  have  made  particular  mention  ;  but  for 
fine,  clear,  nervous,  masculine  English,  to  put  into 
a  letter,  or  into  a  despatch,  or  into  a  closet  scold- 
ing, I  suspect  she  would  have  held  rank  with  any 
of  them. 

If  not  a  poet,  she  led  poets  into  gracious  ways 
of  speech.  Her  culture,  her  clear  perceptions, 
her  love  of  pageants  even,  her  intolerance  of  all 
forms  of  dulness  or  slowness,  her  very  vanities  — 
were  all  of  them  stimulants  to  those  who  could 
put  glowing  thought  into  musical  language.  Her 
high  ruff,  her  jewelled  corsage,  her  flashing  eye, 
her  swift  impulses,  her  perils,  her  triumphs,   her 


312  LANDS,   LETTERS,    dr-  KLNGS. 

audacities,  her  maideiihoocT  —  all  drew  flatteries 
that  heaped  themselves  in  songs  and  sonnets.  So 
live  a  woman  and  so  live  a  Queen  magnetized  dul- 
ness  into  speech. 

The  Queeri's  Progresses. 

I  spoke  but  now  of  her  love  of  pageants  ;  every 
visiting  prince  from  every  great  neighbor  king- 
dom was  honored  with  a  pageant ;  every  foreign 
suitor  to  her  maidenly  graces  —  whether  looked 
on  with  favor  or  disfavor  (as  to  which  her  eye  and 
lip  told  no  tales)  —  brought  gala-days  to  London 
streets  —  brought  revels,  and  bear-baitings,  and 
high  passages  of  arms,  and  swaying  of  jDennons 
and  welcoming  odes.  Many  and  many  a  time  the 
roystering  jjoets  I  named  to  you  —  the  Greenes, 
the  Marlowes,  the  Jonsons,  the  Peeles,  may  have 
looked  out  from  the  Mermaid  Tavern  windows 
upon  the  royal  processions  that  swept  with  gold- 
cloth, and  crimson  housings  through  Cheapside, 
where  every  house  blazed  with  welcoming  banners, 
and  every  casement  was  crowded  with  the  faces  of 
the  onlookers. 


THE   QUEEN'S  PROGRESSES.  313 

lliereby,  too,  she  would  very  likely  have  passed 
in  her  famous  "  Progresses  "  to  her  good  friends  in 
the    eastern  counties;  or  to   her  loved   Lord  Bur- 
leigh, or  to  Cecil,  at  their  fine  place  of  Theobalds' 
Park,*  near   Waltham   Cross.     True,  old  Burleigh 
was  wont  to  complain  that  her  Majesty  made  him 
frequent  visits,  and  that  everyone  cost  him  a  matter 
of  two  or  three  thousand  pounds.     Indeed  it  was 
no  small  affair  to  take  in  the  Queen  with  her  attend- 
ants.    Hospitable  people  of  our  day  are  sometimes 
taken   aback   by  an  easy-going  friend  who   comes 
suddenly  on  a  visit  with  a  wife,  and  four  or   five 
children,  and   Saratoga    trunks,  and  two   or  three 
nursery-maids,  and  a  few  poodles  and  a  fox-terrier  ; 
but  think  of  the  Queen,  with  her  tiring-women,  and 
her  ladies  of  the  chamber,  and  her  ushers,  and  her 
grand  falconer,  and  her  master  of  the  hounds,  and 
her  flesher — who  knows  the  cuts  she  likes  —  and 
her   cook,    and    her   secretary,    and   her  fifty   yeo- 
men  of   the  guard,   and   her   sumpter  mules,   and 
her  chaplain,  and  her  laundry-women,  and  her  fine- 


*  Nichols,  in  his  Progresses  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  vol.  i. 
(Preface),  says:  "She  was  twelve  times  at  Theobalds, 
which  was  a  very  convenient  distance  from  Loudon,     .     .     . 


314  LANDS,   LETTERS,    &^  A'LVGS. 

starchers !  No  wonder  Lord  Burleigh  groaned 
when  he  received  a  Httle  notelet  from  his  dear 
Queen  saying  she  was  coming  down  upon  him  — 
for  a  week  or  ten  days. 

And  EUzabeth  loved  these  little  surprises  over- 
much, and  the  progress  along  the  high  roads 
thither  and  back,  which  so  fed  her  vanities  :  She 
was  a  woman  of  thrift  withal,  and  loved  her  sav- 
ings ;  and  the  kitchen  fires  at  Nonsuch  palace,  or 
at  Greenwich  or  at  Eichmond,  might  go  out  for  a 
time  while  she  was  away  upon  these  junketings. 

I  know  that  my  young  readers  will  be  snuggling 
in  their  minds  a  memory  of  that  greatest  Progress 
of  hers,  and  that  grandest  of  all  private  entertain- 
ments —  at  Kenilworth  Castle  ;  wondei'ing,  maybe, 
if  that  charming,  yet  over-sad  story  of  Walter 
Scott's  is  true  to  the  very  life  ?  And  inasmuch  as 
they  will  be  devouring  that  book,  I  suspect,  a  great 
deal  oftener  than  they  Avill  read  Laneham's  account 
of  the  great  entertainment,  or  Gascoigne's,*  I  will 

the  Queen  lying  tliere  at  his  Lordship's  charge,  sometimes 
three  weeks,  or  a  month,  or  six  weeks  together." 

*  George  Gascoigne  (b.  1530  ;  d.  1577)  published  a  tract,  in 
those   days,  entitled    The  Princely  Pleasures  of  Kenelwortk 


KENILW0R7H.  3' 5 

tell  tliem  Low  much,  and  where  it  varies  from  the 
true  record.  There  was  a  Robert  Dudley,  Earl  of 
Leicester  —  a  brilliant  man,  elegant  in  speech,  in 
person,  in  manner — at  a  court  where  his  nephew 
Phihp  Sidney  had  shone  —  altogether  such  a  courtier 
as  Scott  has  painted  him  :  And  the  Queen  had 
regarded  him  tenderly  —  so  tenderly  that  it  became 
the  talk  of  her  household  and  of  the  world.  It  is 
certain,  too,  that  Leicester  gave  to  the  Queen  a 
magnificent  entertainment  at  his  princely  castle  of 
Kenilwbrth,  in  the  month  of  July,  1575.  There 
were  giants,  there  were  Tritons,  there  were  floating 
islands.  Lawns  Avere  turned  into  lakes,  and  lakes 
were  bridged  with  huge  structures,  roofed  with 
crimson  canopies,  where  fairies  greeted  the  great 
guest  with  cornucopias  of  flowers  and  fruits. 
There  was  fairy  music  too  ;  there  were  dances  and 
plays  and  fireworks,  that  lighted  all  the  region 
round  about  with  a  blaze  of  burning  darts,  and 
streams  and  hail  of  fire-sparks. 

In  all  this  there  is  no    exaggeration  in    Scott's 

Castle,  wliich  appears  in  Nicliol's  Progresses  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth; as  does  also  Laneham's  Account  of  the  Queen's  Enter- 
tainment at  KiUingicorth  [sic]  Castle. 


3i6  LAXDS,   LETTERS,    &-  JC/NGS. 

picturing  ;  none  either  in  his  portraiture  of  the 
coquetries  and  princely  graces  of  the  Queeu.  It  ig 
probable  that  no  juster  and  truer  picture  of  her 
asjject  and  bearing,  and  of  the  more  salient  points 
of  her  character  ever  will  or  can  be  drawn. 

Thither,  too,  had  come  —  from  all  the  country 
round  —  yeomen,  strolling  players,  adventurous 
youths,  quick  to  look  admiringly  after  that  brilliant 
t^'i^e  of  knighthood  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  then  in  his 
twenty-first  year,  and  showing  his  gay  trappings 
in  the  royal  retinue :  amongst  such  youths  wei-e, 
very  likely,  ]\Iichael  Drayton  and  William  Shake- 
speare, boys  both  in  that  day,  just  turned  of  eleven, 
and  making  light  of  the  ten  or  twelve  miles  of  open 
and  beautiful  country  which  lay  between  Kenil- 
worth  and  their  homes  of  Atherstone  and  of  Strat- 
ford-uj)on-Avon. 

It  is  true  too,  that  Leicester,  so  admired  of  the 
Queen,  and  who  was  her  host,  had  once  married  an 
Amy  Robsart :  true,  too,  that  this  Amy  Robsart  had 
died  in  a  strangely  sudden  way  at  an  old  manor- 
house  of  Cumnor ;  and  true  that  a  certain  Foster 
and  Varney,  who  were  dependants  of  Leicester,  did 
in  some  sense  have  her  in  their  keeping.     But — ■ 


KENIL I VOR  TH.  317 

and  liere  the  divergence  from  history  begins  — 
this  poor  Amy  Robsart  had  been  married  to  Sir 
Robert  Dudley  before  he  came  to  the  title  of  Leices- 
ter, and  she  died  in  the  mysterious  way  alluded 
to,  some  fifteen  years  before  these  revels  of  Kenil- 
worth  :  but  not  before  Elizabeth  had  been  attracted 
by  the  proud  and  noble  bearing  of  Robert  Dudley. 
Her  fondness  for  him  began  about  the  year  1559. 
And  it  was  this  early  fondness  of  hers  which  gave 
color  to  the  story  that  he  had  secretly  caused  the 
death  of  Amy  Robsart.  The  real  truth  will  probably 
never  be  known  :  there  was  a  public  inquiry  (not  so 
full,  he  said,  as  he  could  have  wished)  which  ac- 
quitted Leicester  ;  but  his  character  was  such  that 
he  never  outlived  suspicion.  I  observe  that  Mr. 
Motley,  in  his  History  of  the  United  Netherlands, 
on  the  faith  of  a  paper  in  the  Record  Office,  avers 
Leicester's  innocence  ;  but  the  tenor  of  a  life  counts 
for  more  than  one  justifying  document  in  measur- 
ing a  man's  moral  make-up. 

In  the  year  1575,  when  the  revels  of  Kenilworth 
occurred,  the  Earl  of  Leicester  was  a  widower  and 
Amy  Robsart  had  been  ten  years  mouldering  in  her 
gi'ave  :  but  in  the  year  1576  the  young  Countess  of 


31 S  LANDS,  LETTERS,  &-  A'LVGS. 

Essex  suddenly  became  a  widow,  and  was  married 
privately,  very  shortly  afterward,  to  the  Earl  of 
Leicester.  In  the  next  year,  1577,  the  story  was 
blazed  abroad,  and  the  Queen  showed  her  appre- 
ciation of  the  sudden  match  by  sending  Leicester 
straight  to  the  Tower.  But  she  forgave  him  pres- 
ently. And  out  of  these  scattered  actualities,  as 
regards  the  Earl,  Sir  AValter  Scott  has  embroidered 
his  delightful  romance. 

But  we  have  already  brought  our  literary  men- 
tion up  to  a  point  far  beyond  this  in  the  Queen's 
life ;  up  to  a  point  where  Shakespeare,  instead  of 
tearing  over  hedgerows  and  meadows  to  see  the 
Ti'itons  and  the  harlequins  of  Kenilworth,  has  put 
his  own  Tritons  to  swimming  in  limpid  verse,  and 
has  put  his  bloated,  dying  Falstaff  to  "bab- 
bling o'  green  fields,"  The  Queen,  too,  who  has 
listened  —  besides  these  revels  —  to  the  tender 
music  of  Spenser  and  outlived  him  ;  who  has  heard 
the  gracious  courtliness  of  Sidney,  and  outlived 
him  ;  who  has  lent  a  willing  ear  to  the  young  flat- 
teries of  Raleigh  and  seen  him  ripen  into  a  gray- 
haired  adventurer  of  the  seas  ;  who  has  watched  the 
future  Lord  Keeper,  Francis  Bacon,  as  he  has  shot 


OLD  AGE   OF  ELIZABETH.  319 

up  from  boyhood  into  the  stateliness  of  middle 
age  ;  who  has  seen  the  worshipful  Master  John 
Lyly  grow  up,  and  chant  his  euphuism  and  sing 
his  songs  and  die  :  she  too,  now,  is  feeling  the 
years  —  brilliant  as  they  may  be  in  achievement  — 
count  and  weigh  upon  her. 

Long  as  she  could,  she  cherished  all  the  illusions 
of  youth.  That  poor  old  face  of  hers  was,  I  sus- 
pect, whited  and  reddened  with  other  pigments 
than  what  the  blood  made,  as  the  years  went  by. 
Such  out-of-door  sports  as  bear-baiting  became 
rarer  and  rarer  with  her  ;  and  she  loved  better 
such  fun  as  the  fat  Falstaff  made,  in  her  theatre 
of  Whitehall.  But  only  nicest  observers  saw  the 
change  ;  and  she  never  admitted  it  —  perhajps  not 
to  herself. 

The  gossiping  Paul  Hentzner,  who  had  an  am- 
bassador's chances  of  observation,  says  of  her,  on 
her  way  to  chapel  at  Greenwich  :  — 

"Next  came  the  Queen,  in  her  sixty-fifth  year,  as  we  are 
told  —  very  majestic  :  her  face,  oblong,  fair  but  wrinkled  ; 
her  eyes  small,  yet  black  and  pleasant ;  her  nose  a  little 
hooked.  She  had  in  her  ears  two  pearls  with  very  rich 
drops  ;  and  she  had  on  a  necklace  of  exceeding  fine  jew- 
els.    She  was  dressed  in  white  silk  bordered  with  pearls  of 


320  LANDS,  LETTERS,  £-  KLNGS. 

the  size  of  beans,  and  over   it  a   mantle   of   black   silk   shot 
with  silver  threads." 

This,  observe,  was  over  twenty  years  aftei'  the 
revels  of  Kenil worth :  and  two  years  beyond  this 
date,  when  the  Queen  was  sixty-seven,  a  courtier 
writes :  "  Her  Majesty  is  well,  and  every  second 
day  is  on  horseback."  No  suitor  could  say  a  pleas- 
anter  thing  to  her  than — "  Your  majesty  is  looking 
very  young !  "  She  danced,  when  it  made  her  old 
bones  ache  to  dance. 

No  suitor  could  auy  a  more  inapt  thing  than  to 
express  a  fear  that  a  revel,  or  a  play,  or  a  hunt, 
or  a  dance  might  possibly  fatigue  her  Majesty.  It 
would  bring  a  warning  shake  of  the  head  that 
made  the  jewels  rattle. 

But  at  last  the  days  come  —  as  like  days  are  com- 
ing to  us  all  —  when  she  can  counterfeit  youth  no 
longer.  The  plays  entice  her  no  more.  The  three 
tliousand  court  dresses  that  she  left,  hang  unused 
in  her  wardrobe :  weaknesses  hem  her  in,  turn 
which  way  she  may.  Cecil,  the  son  of  her  old  fa- 
vorite Burleigh,  urges  that  she  must  quit  her  chair 
—  which  she  clung  to,  propped  with  pillows — that 
she  muat  take  to  her  bed.     "  Must"  she  cries,  with 


THE    QUEEN'S  LAST  DAYS.  321 

a  kindling  of  her  old  passionate  life,  "  little  man, 
little  man,  thy  father  never  dared  to  use  such  a 
word  to  his  Queen."  The  gust  passes;  and  she 
clings  to  hfe,  as  all  do,  who  have  such  fast,  hard 
grip  upon  it.  In  short  j)eriods  of  languor  and  re- 
pose, taking  kindly  to  the  issue  —  going  out,  as  it 
were,  like  a  lamp.  Then,  by  some  windy  burst  of 
passion  —  of  hate,  flaming  up  red  and  white  and 
hot  —  her  voice  a  scream,  her  boding  of  the  end  a 
ci-aze,  her  tenacity  of  purpose  dragging  all  friends, 
all  hopes,  all  the  world  to  the  terrible  edge  where 
she  stands  —  the  edge  where  Essex  stood  (she  be- 
thinks herself  with  a  wild  tempest  of  tears)  —  the 
3dge  where  Marie  Stuart  stood  at  Fotheringay,  in 
her  comely  widow's  dress  ;  thinks  of  this  with  a 
shrug  that  means  acquiescence,  that  means  stub- 
born recognition  of  a  fatal  duty  :  that  ghost  does 
no  way  disturb  her. 

But  there  are  others  which  well  may.  Shall  we 
tell  them  over  ? 

No;  let  us  leave  her  with  her  confessor,  saying 
prayers  maybe  ;  her  rings  on  her  fingers  ;  the  lace 
upon  her  pillow  ;  not  forgetting  certain  fine  coque- 
tries to  the  last :  strong-souled,  keen-thoughted,  am- 
21 


322  LANDS,  LETTERS,    &r'  KLNGS. 

bitious,  proud,  vindictive,  passionate  woman,  with 
her  streaks  of  tenderness  out  of  wliich  bitter  tears 
flowed  —  out  of  which  kiudhnesses  crept  to  sun 
themselves,  but  were  quick  overshadowed  by  her 
pride. 

Farewell  to  her ! 

In  our  next  talk  we  shall  meet  a  King  —  but  a 
King  who  is  less  a  man  than  this  Queen  who  i& 
dead. 


INDEX, 


Abbeys  ar,d  Priories  of  Eng- 
lau<i.  60  el  s^eq. 

Aldhelm,  the  Saxon  scholar  and 
poet,  10,  64. 

Alfred,  King,  \1  et  seq. 

Aneurin,  a  Welsh  bard,  the  re- 
puted author  of  Gododin,  7. 

"Arcadia"  of  Philip  Sidney, 
237. 

Archery  in  England,  199. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  on  Celtic  lit- 
erature, 8. 

Arthur,  King,  the  legends  of,  39 
et  seq.;  Geoffrey's  version  of, 
43  ;  jMap's  version,  42  ;  Laya- 
mon's  version,  43. 

Ascham,  Roger,  197 ;  his 
"  Toxophilus,"  199  ;  his 
"  Schoolmaster,"  199 ;  teacher 
of  Queen  Elizabeth,  201. 

Bacon,  Francis,  242  ;  his  char- 
acter, 250  ct  seq.;  his  essays, 
257;  his  Novum  Organum 
and  De  AugmeMis.,  258 ;  his 
death,  259. 

Bacon,  Ptoger,  77  et  seq. 

Balladrj',  English,  158. 

Barnes,  Dame  Juliana,  153. 


Battle  Abbey,  35. 

Beda,  15,  04. 

Beowulf,  41. 

"  Betrothed,"  Scott's  novel,  48. 

Berners,  Lord,  his  translation  of 
Froissart,  129. 

Bible,  Wyclif  s  translation  of, 
90;  Tyndale'a  translation, 
185  ;  reading  of,  by  the  com- 
mon people  forbidden  in  reign 
of  Henry  Vni.,  191. 

Black  Prince,  93,  104,  106, 

Boccaccio,  83. 

Boethius'  "Consolation  of  Phi- 
losophy," translated  by  King 
Alfred,  19. 

"  Boke  of  the  Duchesse,"  Chau- 
cer's poem,  107. 

Books  at  the  end  of  the  thir- 
teenth century,  63  ;  decora- 
tion of,  05. 

"  Brut  "  of  Layamon,  43. 

Burleigh,  Lord,  212,  242. 

C^DMON,  13  et  seq.  ;  possible 
influence  of  his  paraphrase  on 
]Milton,  15. 

Camden,  William,  170,  303. 

Camelot,  39,  40. 


3=4 


INDEX. 


Canute's  verse  about  the  singing 
of  the  monks  of  Ely,  22. 

Canterbury  School,  10. 

"  Canterbury  Tales,"  Chaucer's, 
114. 

Caxton,  45,  149  ;  books  from  his 
press,  151. 

Celtic  literature,  early,  7  et  seq. 

Chapman,  George,  and  his  Ho- 
mer, 266. 

Chaucer,  80,  97  etscq.;  his  early 
life  in  London,  98  ;  a  scholar, 
100  ;  his  connection  with  the 
royal  household,  103 ;  his 
translation  of  the  lionian  de 
la  Hose,  104;  his  "  Boke  of 
the  Duchesse,"  107 ;  his 
' '  Parliament  of  Foules, "  107 ; 
his  "  Troilus  and  Cresseide," 
108  ;  his  journeys  on  the  Con- 
tinent, 108  ;  his  portrait,  112  ; 
his  "Canterbury  Tales,"  114  ; 
characters  of  the  Canterbury 
pilgrims,  1 14  et  seq. ;  localities 
of  the  pilgrimage,  117;  his 
literary  thefts,  119;  example 
of  his  art,  120  et  seq. 

Chevy  Chase,  ballad  of,  159. 

"Comus,"  Milton's,  its  relation 
to  Peele's  "An  Old  Wives 
Tale,"  285. 

Confessio  Amantis  of  Gower, 
128. 

Coryat,  Thomas,  304. 

Cranmer,  182,  185. 

"  Crayon,  Geoflfrey,"  38. 

Damoiselle,  life  of  a,  in    the 

thirteenth  century,  73. 
Danish   invasions   of    England, 

17. 
Dante,  83. 


Dekker,  Thomas,  287. 
Drake,  Sir  Francis,  242. 
Drayton,      Michael,     291  ;      his 

"Poly-olbion,"       292;       his 

"  Nymphidia,"  293. 

Edward  I.,  II.,  and  III.,  82  et 

seq. 

Edward  VI.,  182,  197. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  Roger  As- 
cham's  encomium  of  her  etu- 
diousness,  201  ;  comes  to  the 
throne,  204 ;  her  religion,  20d  ; 
Fronde's  unfavorable  portrait 
of,  207  ;  Soranzo's  desoription 
of,  208  ;  her  greatness,  209  ; 
her  literary  attempts,  311  ; 
her  love  of  pageants,  312;  her 
progresses,  313 ;  at  Kenil- 
worth,  314  ;  her  death,  321. 

Elizabethan  authors,  214. 

Emerson,  his  enjoyment  of  Ta- 
liesin,  8. 

Erasmus,  177. 

"  Euphues,"  by  Lyly,  245. 

Fai.staff,  Jack,  133. 

Foxe,  John,  187. 

Froissart,  Lord  Berners'  trans- 
lation of,  129. 

Froude,  Mr.,  his  history  charac- 
terized, 207. 

Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  o7et 
seq. 

Green's  "  History  of  the  English 
People,"  5,  6;  "Making  of 
England,"  10,  17;  cited,  &1. 

Greene,  Robert,  277 ;  his  rela- 
tions with  Shakespeare,  280. 

Godiva,  Lady,  tradition  of,  23. 

Gower,  John,  127. 


INDEX. 


325 


"  Grave,  the,"  an  Anglo-Saxon 
poem,  21. 

Haklutt,  Richard,  304. 

Hampton  Court,  171. 

Harold  the  Saxon,  29  et  seq. 

"  Harold,"  Tennyson's  play,  29. 

Henry  II.,  48. 

Henry  III.,  56,  65. 

Henry  IV.,  127,  132,  145. 

Henry  v.,  141. 

HcHry  VI.  and  VIL,  144. 

Henry  VIII.,  167  ;  character  of, 
173. 

Hobbes,  Thomas,  261 ;  his  trans- 
lation of  Thucydides,  265. 

Holin.shed,  Raphael,  21 1. 

Hooker,  Richard,  and  the  "Ec- 
clesiastical Polity,"  215,  242. 

"IVANHOK,"  50. 

James  I.  of  Scotland,  137. 

Joan  of  Arc,  146. 

John,  King,  53. 

John  of  Gaunt,  92  ;  a  friend  of 

Wyclif,  92  ;  of  Chaucer,  110, 

145. 
Jonson,  Ben,  282,  295. 

Katharine  of  Aragon,  171. 
"  Kenil worth,"   68;  its  picture 

of   Queen    Elizabeth's    visit, 

31'i. 
"King's  Qaair,  the,"  137. 
Knox,  John,  187. 

L.ANGLANDE,   WiLLIAM,  84. 

Lanier,  Sidney,  his  "  Mabino- 
gion,"  8  ;  his  "  King  Arthur," 
45. 

Latimer,  Hugh,  186. 

Layamon,  43. 


Leicester,   Earl   of,  and   Queen 

Elizabeth,  315. 
Libraries  at  the  end  of  the  thir- 
teenth century,  63. 
Lilly,  William,  the  head-master 

of  St.  Paul's,  173. 
Lindisfame  Abbey,  12. 
Lodge,  Thomas,  275. 
London,  6 ;  in  Chaucer's   time, 

98. 
"London  Lickpenny  "  of  Lyd- 

gate,  136. 
Longfellow's       translation      of 

"The  Grave,"  21. 
Lord's  Prayer,  the,  in  Tyndale's 

version,  185. 
Lydgate,  John,  135. 
Lyly,  John,  245. 
Lytton,  Lord,  his  "Harold,  the 

Last   of    the   Saxon    Kings," 

29. 

"Mabinogion,"  the,  8. 

Macbeth,  the  murder  of,  23. 

"Madoc,"  Southey's  poem,  49. 

Mallory,  Sir  Thomas.  45. 

Mandeville,  Sir  John,  59;  doubts 
respecting  his  travels,  and 
personality,  60. 

Map,  Walter,  42. 

Marco  Polo,  59. 

Marini  Sanuto  on  the  acces- 
sion of  Henry  VIIL,  169. 

Marlowe,  Christopher,  269. 

"Marmion,"  3,  12. 

Mary,  Queen,  182,  184,  197. 

Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  241. 

Matthew  Paris,  46. 

Mermaid  Tavern,  the,  274. 

Milton,  15. 

"Monastery,  the,"  246. 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  175,  185. 


326 


INDEX. 


Nashe,  Thomas,  276. 

Norham  Castle  and  "  Mar- 
mion,"  3. 

Novum  Organurn,  the,  of  Ba- 
con, 258. 

Nut-Brown  Maid,  ballad  of, 
161. 

OCCLEVE,  135. 

Orderic  Vitalis,  46. 
Oxford   in   the  thirteenth   cen- 
tury, 77. 

"Parliament     op    Foules," 

Chaucer's  poem,  107. 
Paston  Letters,  the,  154. 
Peele,    George,    284;  his    "Old 

Wives  Tale,"  285. 
Petrarch,  83. 
"  Piers    Plowman,    the  Vision 

of,"  84. 
Printing,    the   rise   of,  in  Eng- 
land, 149. 
Progresses  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 

312. 
Purvey,  his   work   on   Bible  of 

Wyclif,  96. 
Puttenham's  "  Arte  of  English 

Poesie,"  310. 

Raleigh,  243. 

Religious  houses,  spoliation  of, 

205. 
Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  50. 
Richard  H.,  126,  130. 
Richard  III.,  148. 
Rienzi,  83,  90. 
Robert  of  Gloucester,  57. 
Robin  Hood's  bay,  13. 
Robin  Hood,  69. 
Robin  Hood  Imllads,  159. 
Roger  de  Hoveden,  46. 


"  Roman  de  la  Rose,"  104. 
Roman    remains    in    England 

6. 
"  Rosalynde,"    Lodge's     novel, 

275. 

Sackville,  Thomas,  210,  243. 
"Saxon  Chronicle,  the,"  17,  27, 

37. 
St.  Albans,  66. 
St.   Augustine  in  England,   10, 

63. 
St.  Colomba,  monastery  of,  11. 
"Schoolmaster,    the,"    by   As- 

cham,  200. 
"  Scottish  Chiefs,  the,"  81. 
Shakespeare,  his  "  Henry  IV.," 
133;  "Henry v.,"  141;  "Hen- 
ry VL,"  146  ;  "Richard  HI.,'' 
148,  243  ;  with  the  wits  at  the 
Mermaid  Tavern,  281. 
Sidney,  Philip,  230  ;  his    "  Ar- 
cadia," 237  ;  lus  "  Defence  of 
Poesie,"  238. 
Skelton,  John,  139. 
Sonnet,  the,  first  used  in  Eng- 
lish by  Wyatt,  193. 
Soranzo,   Signor,    his   report  of 

Queen  Elizabeth,  208. 
Spedding,  James,  his  "  Life  of 

Bacon,"  251. 

Spenser,     Edmund,      217 ;     his 

"Shepherd's     Calendar,"    217; 

"Faery  Queen,"  221  et  seq.  ; 

"  Epithalamiuni,"  228. 

Sternhold  and  Hopkins'  versions 

of  the  Psalms,  189. 
Stow,  John,  304. 
Stubbes,  Philip,  308. 
Surrey,  Earl  of,  194 ;  his  poetry, 
and  story   of   his   Florentine 
tourney,  19.5. 


INDEX. 


327 


Taillefer,  the  Norman  min- 
strel, ~6. 

Taine's  treatment  of  Richard 
CcEur  de  Lion,  50. 

Taliesin,  8. 

"Talisman,  the,"  51. 

Tennyson's  "Harold,"  30; 
"Idyis  of  the  King,"  40; 
"  Queen  Mary,"  18.3. 

Thackeray's  treatment  of  Rich- 
ard Coeur  de  Lion  in  "  Rebec- 
ca and  Rowena,"  51. 

Thomas  a  Becket,  48. 

Tolstoi,  Count,  180. 

Tudor,  Sir  Owen,  and  the  Tudor 
succession,  144. 

Tusser,  Thomas,  211. 

Tyndale,  William,  185. 

■''Utopia"  by  Sir  Thomas 
More,  1(8. 


Vox  Clamantis  of  Gower,  127. 

Wage,  42. 

Wallace,  William,  81. 

"Westward,  Ho,"  Kingsley's 
novel,  40. 

Whitby  Monastery,  12. 

Whittingham,  189. 

William  the  Norman,  25  et 
seq. 

William  of  Malmsbury,  46. 

William  of  Newburgh,  46. 

Wolsey,  Cardinal,  170,  17.3. 

Wyclif,  89,  90  et  seq.,-  his  trans- 
lation of  the  Bible,  9.5. 

Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas,  193. 

Wright,  Leonard,  307. 

York,  6. 

York  and  Lancaster,  the  wars 
of,  145. 


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